The Lives of George & Robert Stephenson

First issued in the mid-nineteenth century as part of Smiles's engineers series, this double biography follows George Stephenson from a Northumberland colliery boyhood to the Stockton and Darlington and Liverpool and Manchester railways, then his son Robert through the Rocket trials, the London and Birmingham line, and the tubular bridges at Conway and Menai. The narrative includes the Geordy safety lamp, the crossing of Chat Moss, and the contest of locomotives at Rainhill. It is a Victorian life-and-works history of two railway engineers and the early locomotive, not a general textbook of steam.

Bound in dark green cloth with a yellow paper label printed in green inset in the front board. Endleaves printed in colour. Pale yellow-brown slipcase.