£295.00
BELLOC, Hilaire. The Highway and Its Vehicles. Edited by Geoffrey Holme. London: The Studio Limited, 1926. First edition.
An extensively illustrated study of the historical relationship between the road and the vehicles that travelled upon it, written by the celebrated Anglo-French historian and essayist Hilaire Belloc. Illustrated throughout with reproductions drawn from manuscripts, paintings and other historical sources, including attractive colour plates.
Belloc approaches the history of transport from an unusual perspective: rather than treating the road simply as infrastructure upon which vehicles travelled, he argues that “the vehicle made the highway” — that the development of wheeled transport itself determined the width, construction, gradients, bridges and ultimately the character of the road.
Original binding, retaining the scarce illustrated dust jacket. The jacket shows considerable age-related wear, with rubbing, chipping, tears and losses particularly around the extremities and spine; nevertheless, its survival is an important feature. Some foxing and spotting internally, principally to preliminary leaves and margins, with the illustrated material remaining attractive. A pencil notation appears on an early leaf.
Year: 1926
Edition: First Edition
Publisher: The Studio Limited, London
Editor: Geoffrey Holme
For thousands of years, the history of civilisation has also been the history of movement.
Belloc begins with a deceptively simple proposition: the vehicle came before the highway. Once people began moving increasingly heavy loads on wheels, the landscape itself had to change. Tracks became roads; roads acquired engineered surfaces; bridges were built; gradients altered; and the dimensions of vehicles helped establish conventions that persisted for centuries.
From ancient carts and Roman roads through medieval wagons, coaches and later forms of transport, Belloc follows the reciprocal development of vehicle and highway. His subjects include wheel construction, gauge, load carrying, road surfaces, bridges, military transport and the broader social consequences of increasingly efficient movement.
The book is particularly appealing visually. Historical images include medieval manuscript representations of carts and wagons and finely reproduced colour illustrations, transforming the volume from a conventional history of transport into a substantial pictorial record of the evolution of road travel.
Published in 1926, at precisely the moment when the motor car was transforming the road once again, Belloc’s historical argument acquired particular resonance. The ancient relationship between vehicle and highway was entering another profound period of change.
he Highway and Its Vehicles combines several collecting fields: transport history, motoring, road engineering, social history and illustrated books.
Belloc was one of the most recognisable British writers and public intellectuals of his generation, and this is an attractive example of his historical writing outside the political and biographical subjects for which he is perhaps better known.
The illustrations substantially enhance the book’s appeal, particularly the reproductions from medieval manuscripts and the colour plates. Most importantly from a collecting perspective, this copy retains its original illustrated dust jacket. Although significantly worn, jackets from substantial illustrated books of this period were frequently discarded, making its survival desirable.
A particularly appropriate volume for a collection concerned with the history of travel, roads, horse-drawn transport or the emergence of modern motoring.
