Building a mountain on a blank sheet of paper : Alfred Wainwright’s Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells

Woodham, Liz (2023) Building a mountain on a blank sheet of paper : Alfred Wainwright’s Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells. Publishing History (87): 8.

Abstract

For many people Alfred Wainwright has become the godfather of modern fellwalking in the English Lake District. His status is largely due to the mass appeal of his Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells. First published between 1955 and 1966, these seven pocket-sized guidebooks, with handwritten text and over 3,600 illustrations, have a chapter for each of the 214 Lakeland hills and mountains Wainwright selected. This article places the Pictorial Guides in the context of examples of English Lake District print culture which Wainwright recognised as authoritative. It identifies four ways (three concerning illustration and the fourth relating to their structure) in which Wainwright's 'building a mountain on a blank sheet of paper' in the Pictorial Guides have been particularly influential in the print history of English Lake District tourism. It concludes by suggesting that in a world of digital mapping, the distinctive printed appearance of the Pictorial Guides continues to inspire new ways of experiencing the uplands of the English Lake District on foot.