Knihy, které cestovaly. Cestovní a poštovní příručky jako orientační pomůcky v Evropě raného novověku

Printed travel and postal manuals represent a specific genre within chorographies and what is termed wayfinding literature. These concise and systematic manuals describe major European long-distance routes through lists of consecutive locations with distances between them. Their production reached its peak at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries; during subsequent decades, they were gradually replaced by thematic travel (postal) maps. This study aims to familiarise Czech curators with current research in the international scholarly community, where new data from the research projects Early Modern Digital Itineraries (EMDigIt) and Beyond the Horizon can facilitate proper identification and cataloguing of these manuals. Within historical library collections, such works are often overshadowed by travel accounts or more visually appealing maps and atlases in ‘geographical’ sections. To enable easier identification of individual titles within this genre, the study systematically summarises both external (material) and internal (content-based) characteristics of the manuals and provides a chronologically organised overview of key titles published from the 16th to 18th centuries, with attention to their survival in the Czech Republic.