Albert [Richard]. The English Hotel Nuisance.

by SMITH

£300 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

Hellish Hotels and Dickensian Disputes SMITH, Albert [Richard]. The English Hotel Nuisance. London: [ W.S. Johnson for ] David Bryce. 1855 (wrapper dated 1856). 8vo. Publisher’s glazed wrappers printed in red; pp. 28, [4 (advertisements)], with large letterpress folding table bound after p. 28; wrappers slightly dusty; offset from wrappers to title, small tape repair to verso of table; else a very good copy. First edition of this satirical critique of the Victorian hospitality industry in contrast to the luxurious hotels of the Continent, by the mountaineer, journalist, and founding member of the Alpine Club Albert Richard Smith (1816–1860). In this entertaining diatribe, Smith demands a greater variety of food (dreaming of ‘something beyond “Chop, sir, steak, boiled fowl for dinner”’), the abolition of candlelight in favour of gas light, better service, and an office for information and complaints, and laments the state of England’s ‘bow-windowed, old-chamber-maided, stone-passaged, tobacco-odoured’ inns in comparison to the ‘perfect science’ of European hotels. He also adds a responsibility which ‘all those travelling with a family will readily appreciate’ and which ‘rests entirely with ourselves - the recognition of the presence of ladies in the coffee-room, as in the salle-à-manger ’, spaces from which women were largely excluded. Smith had spent a great deal of time on the Continent as a mountaineer, and his dramatic and theatrical recounting of his ascent of Mont Blanc

• Binding: Hardcover

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