Beschreibung:

BOURNE, John Cooke & John BRITTON (1771-1857). Drawings of the London and Birmingham Railway, with an Historical and Descriptive Account by John Britton . London: R. Ackermann & Co., 1839. 2° (544 x 357mm). Lithographed title with large view and small vignettes at the corners and 34 plates on 29 sheets, 2 lithographed maps of the Line from Birmingham to London on one sheet, wood-engraved vignette in the text (2 plates loose, small piece torn from (blank) lower fore-corner of title, another plate with a small piece missing from fore-margin with no loss). Original purple cloth by Burn and Son, gilt stamp on upper cover with title, the arms of London and Birmingham and acanthus leaf motifs from the original Euston Station (the original morocco spine replaced, new corners, covers a little soiled). FIRST EDITION of this important work chronicling and illustrating the building of the first railway route from London to the North until 1850, with Bourne's lithographs constituting 'a priceless record of the methods used in constructing a great trunk line in the 1830s', Klingender, Art and the Industrial Revolution , pp.124-26. Contemporary records suggest that the labour performed in building the line was comparable to the construction of the Great Pyramid, a not incredible comparison when one sees Bourne's view of the immense cutting at Tring where every piece of earth was dug up and removed by hand. All this, and the considerable (and powerful), opposition of the landowners along the route rendered the undertaking one of the most remarkable of the early Victorian period. Abbey Life 398; Goldsmiths' 31034.