Rough
Guides Company Information
About
The Rough Guides Company
In
the summer of 1981, Mark Ellingham, a recent graduate from Bristol
University, was travelling round Greece and couldn't find a guidebook
that really met his needs. On the one hand there were the student
guides, banging on about saving every last cent, and on the other
the heavyweight cultural tomes whose authors seemed to have spent
more time in a research library than lounging away the afternoon
at a taverna or on the beach.
In
a bid to avoid getting a job, Mark and a small group of writers
set about creating their own guide. It was a guide to Greece that
aimed to combine a journalistic approach to description with a thoroughly
practical approach to travellers' needs, a guide that would incorporate
culture, history and contemporary insights with a critical edge,
together with up-to-date, value-for-money listings. Back in London,
Mark and the team finished their Rough Guide, as they called it,
and talked Routledge into publishing the book.
That
first Rough Guide to Greece, published in 1982, was a student scheme
that became a publishing phenomenon. The immediate success of the
book, with successive reprints and a Thomas Cook prize short-listing,
spawned a series that rapidly covered dozens of destinations. Rough
Guides had a ready market among impecunious backpackers, but soon
acquired a much broader and older readership that relished Rough
Guides' wit and inquisitiveness as much as their enthusiastic, critical
approach. Everyone wants value for money, but not at any price.
Rough
Guides soon began supplementing the "rougher" information
about hostels and low-budget listings with the kind of detail on
restaurants and quality hotels that independent-minded visitors
on any budget might expect, whether on business in New York or trekking
in Thailand.
These days the guides, distributed worldwide by the Penguin group,
include recommendations from shoestring to luxury and cover more
than 200 destinations around the globe, including almost every country
in the Americas and Europe, more than half of Africa and most of
Asia and Australasia. Their ever-growing team of authors and photographers
is spread all over the world, particularly in Europe, the USA and
Australia.
In
1994, we published the Rough Guide to World Music and Rough Guide
to Classical Music; and a year later the Rough Guide to the Internet.
All three books have become benchmark titles in their fields, which
encouraged them to expand into other areas of publishing, mainly
around popular culture. Rough Guides now publish:
- Travel
guides to more than 200 worldwide destinations
- Dictionary
phrasebooks to 22 major languages
- History
guides ranging from Ireland to Islam
- Maps
printed on rip-proof and waterproof Polyart™ paper
- Music
guides running the gamut from Opera to Elvis
- Restaurant
guides to London, New York and San Francisco
- Reference
books on topics as diverse as the Weather and Shakespeare
- Sports
guides from Formula One to Manchester United
- Pop
culture books from Lord of the Rings to Cult TV
- World
Music CDs in association with World Music Network
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