“[A] British Social Institution“: The Visitors' Book and Hotel Culture in Victorian Britain and Ireland

Abstract

The visitors' book occupied a central place in the hotel and inn culture of Victorian Britain and Ireland, reflecting intertwined legal regimes and leisure practices that created distinctive space for inscription in, and reading of, the volume—acts that were portrayed as unique to the travel cultures of the United Kingdom. Contemporary commentators, while playfully critiquing vulgar “inn verse,“ nonetheless lamented its displacement by prescriptive regimes of guest registration, which marked intensifying corporate and continental influences over what they regarded as singular practices associated with British and Irish traveling culture. Indeed the social and cultural history of the visitors' book offers a window onto travel performances, the liminality of hotel and inn space, distinctive features of the Law of Innkeepers in the Anglo-American legal tradition, and contests over status and taste as guests placed their imprimatur on places of high physical circulation and social fluidity.

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