{"product_id":"smith-albert-richard-the-english-hotel-nuisance","title":"SMITH, Albert [Richard]. The English Hotel Nuisance.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003eHellish Hotels and Dickensian Disputes\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSMITH, Albert [Richard].\u003c\/strong\u003e The English Hotel Nuisance. \u003ci\u003eLondon:\u003c\/i\u003e [\u003ci\u003eW.S. Johnson for\u003c\/i\u003e] \u003ci\u003eDavid Bryce.\u003c\/i\u003e 1855 (wrapper dated 1856).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst 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).\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 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 \u003ci\u003esalle-à-manger\u003c\/i\u003e’, spaces from which women were largely excluded.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSmith 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 at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly was instrumental in turning mountain climbing into a Victorian craze. The publication of the present pamphlet sparked controversy with Charles Dickens, then editor of the journal \u003ci\u003eHousehold Words\u003c\/i\u003e, who resented Smith’s characterisation of English hotels and deployed his apprentice journalist, George Augustus Sala, to write a ‘contradictory article for \u003ci\u003eHousehold Words\u003c\/i\u003e on the subject. According to Sala, writing in retrospect in \u003ci\u003eLondon Up to Date\u003c\/i\u003e (1894), “Dickens, although a Radical in politics, was curiously Conservative in many social matters, and he was rather opposed than favourable to Grand Hotels”. Sala disappointed Dickens and backed Smith’s call for the importation of American-style hotels. Believing that the “vast majority of Englishhotels […] were of the kind described in the Pickwick Papers’ – and not in a good way – Sala became an advocate for what he called the “Hotel Brobdingnag”, or the monstrous international grand hotel, to the extent, in fact, that he claims to have drawn up a prospectus for a Grand Hotel Company, which he tried to hawk, unsuccessfully, around the City of London in 1856’ (Moore, p. 10).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe table at the end, intended to show show Smith’s ‘untravelled readers what a wine-list may be extended to in a first-class hotel’, reproduces the enormous wine list of the Drei Mohren Hotel in Augsburg, which had hosted Mozart, Casanova, Goethe, and several European rulers, including Napoleon. The choice ranges from more local products to wines from South Africa, Hungary, Greece, Anatolia, Lebanon and Syria, and even Persia, with a note from the proprietor reassuring patrons that he had chosen these more exotic wines during his travels abroad.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSee Moore, Hotel Modernity: Corporate Space in Literature and Film (2021).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2125043\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64039915553145,"sku":"2125043","price":300.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2125043.jpg?v=1784817308","url":"https:\/\/sotherans.co.uk\/products\/smith-albert-richard-the-english-hotel-nuisance","provider":"Sotherans","version":"1.0","type":"link"}