Marrin's Bookshop

Item Description

FIRST EDITION. 8vo. 9.5 x 6.5 inches. 221 pp. + [1] pp. colophon. Bound in original red sloth, gilt,in price clipped pictorial dust wrapper, which has edge wear and chips and tears at head and tail of spine. Extremities worn and lightly sunned at board edges and a little browning and foxing of flyleaves; otherwise a very good clean copy. Illustrated by coloured frontispiece by Barbara Jones, by 48 pages of black and white photographs and by large folding map at end. Decorated by title page vignette and by publisher's device on colophon page. First edition of a standard history of English inland waterways, river navigations and canals. It includes chapters on canal locks, aqueducts and tunnels, waterway maintenance, boats and boatbuilding, traffic working and motive power and the boatman. The book. illustrated by many photographs of the mid-century period, reflects the position of the waterways as it was around 1950. An early work by Lionel Thomas Caswall Rolt (1910-74), transport and industrial historian and biographer and pioneer of canal preservation and use for leisure cruising.