The Gateway Guide: A Transnational Book & Tourism History, 1950-1975

This project studies the Gateway tourist guidebook series, an extraordinary publishing success in postwar Europe and an institution in modern Scandinavian travel culture. The project combines two lines of enquiry: (1) a book history focus on the production, distribution, reception and circulation of the Danish originals and their European translations, and; (2) a tourism history focus on overlooked continuities between early 20th century travel cultures and the postwar era of mass tourism. Employing mixed methods, the project pioneers computational “distant reading” of tourist guidebooks in combination with qualitative close readings. The methods are mutually supportive, leading to more comprehensive and robust knowledge about modern guidebooks, the history of mass tourism, and transnational publishing.