1887 Cook's Excursionist Tourist Advertiser , American Edition, January 1887: White Star Line, Maps of Florida and Great Britain

This is an original January 1887 issue of Cook's Excursionist and Home and Foreign Tourist Advertiser, American Edition, published by Thomas Cook & Son from their Chief American Office at 261 Broadway, New York. It is an early Gilded Age travel periodical packed with color maps, transatlantic steamship advertising, and period hotel and merchant ads.

The Cover
The full-page engraved pictorial cover shows a globe; a steam locomotive marked "Cook's Tours"; a Nile steamer; the Fall River Line steamer Pilgrim; Cook's offices at Ludgate Circus, London; Niagara Falls; and shipboard scenes.

The Maps

• Color map of Florida.
• Color map of Great Britain.

Steamship and Railway Advertising

• White Star Line: mail steamers sailing from New York every Thursday via Queenstown, illustrated, naming the Britannic, Germanic, Adriatic, Celtic, Republic, and Baltic. White Star later built the Titanic.
• Pacific Mail Steamship Company: New York to San Francisco via the Isthmus of Panama, with Japan and China Line fares and sailing schedules.
• Quebec Steamship Company: Bermuda and West India lines.
• Old Dominion Steamship Co.: New York to Old Point Comfort, Norfolk, Richmond, and Newport News.
• Atlas Line: special winter tours to the West Indies and Spanish Main at $5.00 a day.
• Glasgow & South-Western Railway: Glasgow to London St. Pancras, with Pullman drawing-room and sleeping cars.

Hotels and Merchants

• Gedney House at 40th Street and Broadway, New York City.
• Hygeia Hotel at Old Point Comfort, "The Queen of Winter Resorts," illustrated.
• Charleston Hotel in Charleston, S.C., illustrated.
• Telegrafo Hotel in Havana, Cuba.
• American House in Boston.
• Walduck's Bedford Hotel in London.
• Advertising from Joseph Gillott's Steel Pens, Epps's Cocoa, Nathan, Neat & Co. trunks, J. B. Crook & Co. fishing tackle and guns, Gate City Stone Filter Co., The Travelers Insurance Company of Hartford, Mutual Accident Association, J. & E. Atkinson perfumers, Philadelphia Venetian Blinds, Kennedy & Moon custom house brokers, and Blair's Pills.

Also Inside

• Engraved illustration of the Thomas Cook & Son American headquarters on Broadway.
• Listings of Cook's offices worldwide: American, European, Oriental, and Australasian.
• Thomas Cook & Son banking and exchange department, with circular notes and letters of credit.

Condition
Age-appropriate toning. There are small chips and tears along the spine fold and the cover edge. Please see photos for the full condition.

Why It Matters
Thomas Cook & Son invented the modern organized tour. Issues of the Excursionist recorded how Victorian travelers actually crossed oceans and continents: which lines, which routes, and at what cost. Issues from the 1880s are especially scarce, and copies with the maps still intact are harder still, since the maps were often removed and sold on their own. This issue appeals to collectors of White Star Line and ocean liner material, Florida ephemera, advertising history, and the history of tourism.

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