The Remedy With the Acrostic Name

A great essay about nineteenth-century guidebooks, by Jonathan Keates in the TLS (only part of the story's posted online). I love this stuff, I always turn to old guidebooks when I'm doing research. And in fact Keates provides a charming detail that I think I am going to poach for my novel. The ads at the back are almost the most appealing things in these books (that's how I realized, for instance, what a staggering number of "temperance hotels" there were in Edinburgh at the turn of the century). Keates cites an ad for Yanatas, "The Remedy With the Acrostic Name": You are Now Able to Avoid Seasickness. Four shillings and ninepence a bottle.