Richard Ford

Richard Ford (writer)

Richard Ford was an English writer. He graduated at Trinity College, Oxford, in 1817, and was afterward called to the bar, but never practiced. He spent four years traveling in Spain and in 1845 published his delightful Handbook for Travellers in Spain, in two volumes...

’s A Handbook for Travellers in Spain (1845) marked a defining moment in English travel literature

Travel literature

Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...

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British tourists were travelling through Europe in increasing numbers and the need for guidebooks was beginning to be supplied by publishers like John Murray

John Murray (publisher)

John Murray is an English publisher, renowned for the authors it has published in its history, including Jane Austen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Byron, Charles Lyell, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Herman Melville, and Charles Darwin...

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Ford, who had gained tremendous knowledge of Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 by extensive travel on horseback, wrote this charming account enlivened by humour and anecdotes.

In Ford's obituary in The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

, commonly attributed to Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, "so great a literary achievement had never before been performed under so humble a title."
Ford marked, with George Borrow

George Borrow

George Henry Borrow was an English author who wrote novels and travelogues based on his own experiences around Europe. Over the course of his wanderings, he developed a close affinity with the Romani people of Europe. They figure prominently in his work...

 the eccentric English traveller, an interest in Spain that would continue through the twentieth century on the part of British writers: Gerald Brenan

Gerald Brenan

Edward FitzGerald "Gerald" Brenan, CBE was a British writer and Hispanist who spent much of his life in Spain.He is best known for The Spanish Labyrinth, a historical work on the background to the Spanish Civil War, and for South from Granada: Seven Years in an Andalusian Village...

, Norman Lewis and George Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

 were among the most eminent of these successors, with Jason Webster

Jason Webster (author)

Jason Webster is an Anglo-American crime novelist, travel writer and critic, the main focus of whose work is devoted to Spain. He was born in California in 1970 and lives in Valencia, Spain-Education:Webster was educated in England, Egypt and Italy...

 (the author of Duende, Andalus and Guerra) and Chris Stewart

Chris Stewart (author)

Christopher 'Chris' Stewart , was the original drummer and a founding member of Genesis. He is now a farmer and an author.-Background and musical career:...

(the author of Driving Over Lemons) being contemporary.

As of 1966 the book was still being reprinted.

Online text

Essentially covers the South. Essentially covers the North.