A Batch of Guide-Books to the Norfolk Broads

Abstract

SURELY no spot in the British Isles has been so “beguided” as the Norfolk Broads. For the last twenty years the literature of the subject has been on the increase, till hardly a magazine or newspaper exists from Blackwood to Exchange and Mart which has not opened its pages to the flood of contributors on this apparently fascinating subject; and the whole has culminated in a shower of guide-books which enlivens the railway bookstalls with their gay exteriors, rendering it difficult to say which of the twain is the more largely advertised—Colman's mustard or the “Norfolk Broads.” The bulk of the “articles” are of the feeblest sort by people who, having spent a few days on the Broads, returned to their distant homes imbued with the erroneous impression that they were qualified to enlighten the world with regard to the features and peculiarities of a tract of country difficult of access and still more difficult to appreciate, and the very names of whose towns and villages they had not learned to spell correctly. Some of the more pretentious productions, by the aid of excellent illustrations reproduced by various processes from photographs, and accompanied by maps, most of which have a more than family resemblance, appear to carry a weight of authority which their letterpress by no means warrants. Another feature which strikes the reader familiar with the country to which these articles refer is the supreme self-reliance of their authors; for although they contain in some instances the most barefaced plagiarisms, it is from one another that they borrow, and not from what may be termed the standard authorities on the subject, which probably some of the writers have never seen.

Hand-book to the Rivers and Broads of Norfolk and Suffolk.

ByG. C. Davies. Ninth Edition. (London and Norwich: Jarrold and Son, 1887.)

The Land of the Broads.

By Ernest R. Suffling. New Edition. (London: L. U. Gill, 1887.)

Three Weeks in Norfolk.

By J. F. M. Clarke. (London: Wyman and Sons.)

A Month on the Norfolk Broads.

By Walter Rye. (London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1887.)

Notes on the Broads and Rivers of Norfolk and Suffolk.

By Harry Brittain. (Norwich: P. Soman, 1887.)