Marrin's Bookshop

Item Description

FIRST EDITION. 8vo. 8.5 x 5.75 inches. 224 pp. Bound in original black cloth, gilt, in price clipped pictorial dust wrapper with minor edge wear. Board extremities worn at lower edge and foxing of some plates; otherwise a very good copy. Illustrated by 17 black and white plates, including frontispiece, by 7 text figures and by map. Decorated by publisher' device on title page. First edition of the pioneering history of the thousands of navvies of the railway age who, in less than eighty years, from 1822 onwards, built 20,000 miles of track with their picks and shovels. Terry Coleman (1931-2004) was a Guardian staff writer who became well known as a newspaper interviewer (The Guardian website, 24 May 2024).