The Women's Rest Tour Association of Boston, Massachusetts comprised a network of middle-class members who collected information about travel abroad and shared it among like-minded American women who required trustworthy non-commercial and unsolicited confidential recommendations suitable for women "who desire to visit Europe at the least possible expense consistent with comfort".
[1] Comfort, decency and security for the unaccompanied female traveller were essential, but picturesqueness and historical settings were also prominently featured in the brief commentaries that were submitted by the members, who had to be recommended by two existing members in order to join.
The origin of the Association was reported in Publishers Weekly for 12 November 1892, with the publication of a second edition of A Summer in England: a handbook for the use of American women: The second edition of 1892 added an article on "Universal Extension and the advantages for summer study in the universities of England" and a "Continental supplement", which initiated the annual publication of the members' copiously annotated lists of recommended pensioni, charming but inexpensive restaurants and small hotels, which were subsequently published, in an American list and a foreign list, in alternate years, for many decades.
Negative reports, or several years passing without a review, resulted in a listing's being dropped, a self-editing feature.
[3] Among the practical hints offered for self-dependent American women in 1892, were some familiar social suggestions: Later editions dropped the social advice and kept closer to the commentary on lodgings and restaurants, listed city by city, eventually covering the visitable world, from Aden to Zanzibar.