Afloat

Afoot in England

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Title: Afoot in England
Author: W.H. Hudson
Release Date: April, 2004 [EBook #5406] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 8, 2002]

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AFOOT IN
ENGLAND ***

AFOOT IN ENGLAND
BY W.H. HUDSON
Contents
I. Guide Books: An Introduction, II. On Going Back, III. Walking and
Cycling, IV. Seeking a Shelter, V. Wind, Wave, and Spirit, VI. By
Swallowfield, VII. Roman Calleva, VIII. A Cold Day at Silchester, IX.
Rural Rides, X. The Last of his Name, XI. Salisbury and its Doves, XII.
Whitesheet Hill, XIII. Bath and Wells Revisited, XIV. The Return of
the Native, XV. Summer Days on the Otter, XVI. In Praise of the Cow,
XVII. An Old Road Leading Nowhere, XVIII. Branscombe, XIX. A
Abbotsbury, XX. Salisbury Revisited, XXI. Stonehenge, XXII. The
Tillage and "The Stones," XXIII. Following a River, XXIV. Troston,
XXV. My Friend Jack,
Chapter One
: Guide-Books: An Introduction
Guide-books are so many that it seems probable we have more than any
other country--possibly more than all the rest of the universe together.
Every county has a little library of its own--guides to its towns,
churches, abbeys, castles, rivers, mountains; finally, to the county as a
whole. They are of all prices and all sizes, from the diminutive
paper-covered booklet, worth a penny, to the stout cloth-bound octavo
volume which costs eight or ten or twelve shillings, or to the gigantic

folio county history, the huge repository from which the guide-book
maker gets his materials. For these great works are also guide-books,
containing everything we want to learn, only made on so huge a scale
as to be suited to the coat pockets of Brobdingnagians rather than of
little ordinary men. The wonder of it all comes in when we find that
these books, however old and comparatively worthless they may be, are
practically never wholly out of date. When a new work is brought out
(dozens appear annually) and, say, five thousand copies sold, it does
not throw as many, or indeed any, copies of the old book out of
circulation: it supersedes nothing. If any man can indulge in the luxury
of a new up-to-date guide to any place, and gets rid of his old one (a
rare thing to do), this will be snapped up by poorer men, who will
treasure it and hand it down or on to others. Editions of 1860-50-40,
and older, are still prized, not merely as keepsakes but for study or
reference. Any one can prove this by going the round of a dozen
second-hand booksellers in his own district in London. There will be
tons of literary rubbish, and good stuff old and new, but few
guidebooks--in some cases not one. If you ask your man at a venture
for, say, a guide to Hampshire, he will most probably tell you that he
has not one in stock; then, in his anxiety to do business, he will,
perhaps, fish out a guide to Derbyshire, dated 1854--a shabby old
book--and offer it for four or five shillings, the price of a Crabbe in
eight volumes, or of Gibbon's Decline and Fall in six volumes, bound
in calf. Talk to this man, and to the other eleven, and they will tell you
that there is always a sale for guide-books --that the supply does not
keep pace with the demand. It may be taken as a fact that most of the
books of this kind published during the last half-century--many
millions of copies in the aggregate--are still in existence and are valued
possessions.
There is nothing to quarrel with in all this. As a people we run about a
great deal; and having curious minds we naturally wish