The title is tongue-in-cheek but apt. The Grand Tour Of Kerry contains extracts written by more than 60 visitors to Kerry, from Giraldus Cambrensis in the 12th century to Niall Williams and Christine Breen in 1990. In between, a judicious selection of famous - and lesser-known - visitors to Kerry includes Charles Smith, Arthur Young, William Thackeray, Thomas Carlyle, Isabella Beeton, J.M. Synge, Robert Lloyd Praeger, Virginia Woolf, Kate O'Brien, Olivia Manning, Robert Mitchum, Rebecca West and Edna O'Brien. The writing is enhanced by antique maps, engravings, sketches and photographs.

The book is a companion to The Grand Tour Of Beara, published by Cailleach Books. Both are the result of extensive research by Penelope Durell and Cornelius Kelly, who are also the people behind Cailleach Books.

"With the Beara book we had to work very hard to find enough material, but with the Kerry book there was so much available that it got boring after a while," says Kelly. "So many people made the same journey to Killarney and said the same thing: the town is awful and the lakes are lovely."

The pair tried to avoid monotony by aiming to give as wide a geographical coverage of Kerry as possible. They also gave priority to those who travelled with specific aims - missionaries, philanthropists and engineers, for example - over those who made the journey simply in order to write about it. A range of nationalities adds further diversity.

The extracts provide both a journey through the county and a trip back in time. Dionisio Massari wrote an account of arriving in Kenmare Bay aboard a frigate in 1645, carrying Giovanni Battista Rinuccini, a nuncio, on a mission to aid the Confederate Catholics. On landing, Massari was mobbed by more than 400 people, each intent on kissing his crucifix.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, food, accommodation and transport were all cause for complaint. William Wordsworth, almost 60 years old, rode from Kenmare to Bantry Bay and back in one day in 1829 on "a vile Irish Hack horse . . . having taken nothing all day but a bad breakfast - one crust of bread, and two basins of milk, and glass of whiskey."

Travel was eased by improvements in transport in the 19th century, but few visitors made allowances for the deprivations of the Famine years in their comments on the poverty and profusion of beggars. An exception is William Bennett, a Quaker who was almost overcome by the sight of the poor dying in the street in Killarney in 1847, just five years before the arrival of the railway.

Penelope Durell is the author of Discover Dursey (Ballinacarriga Books, 1995), a fine work of local history, now in its second print run. She is English and lives in the last house on the southern side of the Beara peninsula, in Allihies parish. She worked in publishing in London and New York before moving to Allihies in 1970, after seeing a postcard of a painting by Tim Goulding.

Cornelius Kelly is the author of Presidential Pets (Abbeyville Books, 1992), a light-hearted look at American presidents. He is a native of Beara who left in the mid-1970s and now lives in New York, where he works freelance as an advertising copywriter, returning each summer to his cottage on the family farm on the north side of Beara.

Durell's publishing background and Kelly's interest in design and picture research are responsible for the books' polished appearance. The team was established by chance, over a cup of coffee three summers ago, when they discovered they had the same idea for the book that eventually became The Grand Tour Of Beara.

That one member of the team is in west Cork and the other in New York has not been a problem. Kelly uses the excellent research facilities at the New York Public Library, while Durell checks out the libraries in Tralee and Cork, and can travel to Dublin and London as necessary. A typesetting service in Durrus sends electronic files to Kelly in New York, which reach him faster than the ones sent by post to Durell.

There is more work involved than you might think, says Durell. "Every contributor has a potted biography, which was no trouble with the well-known ones, but some of them, for example a barrister who wrote walking tours under a pseudonym, had to be tracked down. And I wrote about 100 letters asking for copyright, in addition to doing a tremendous amount of reading."

The books are distributed by Eason, and the Beara book is available from Amazon.com, although the online bookshop has sold only four copies, three of them on St Patrick's Day. It has done well elsewhere, however, selling about two-thirds of its 2,500 print run.

Durell now has e-mail, which is why the pair finished the second book in a year, compared with two years for the Beara book. Having set up such a successful template, and established their transatlantic work routine, Durell and Kelly are keen to start work on a third book.

The Grand Tour Of Kerry and The Grand Tour Of Beara are published by Cailleach Books (£9.99 each)