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GWR books and booklets

Travel books and booklets

The first sale publication produced by the Great Western Railway appeared in 1904. This was The Cornish Riviera written by A.M.Broadley who was a well known writer at the time, and by 1909 he had written a further nine titles for the GWR.

Books by A.M.Broadley

These books contained much travel and historical detail but little of purely railway interest. They proved to be very popular and enjoyed very large sales with reprints and new editions being published until 1926 when they were allowed to go out of print. Priced initially at threepence (3d) each, later editions had risen to sixpence (6d) each with some titles also being made available with cloth-bound covers at 2s 6d (Two shillings and sixpence, or half a Crown).

The Historic Sites and Scenes of England was aimed squarely at travellers coming from abroad. The first two editions carried the subtitle For American Travellers - Points to Remember, but later editions widened their appeal by changing this to For Travellers of All Nations - Where to Go and What to See. It included much information regarding hotels, ports and onward travel arrangements. The later The Cathedral Line of England, Its Sacred Sites and Shrines was aimed squarely at travellers coming from America. It contained sections featuring Bath, Bristol, Stratford-on-Avon and Oxford and, despite the title, it also included a chapter covering Llandaff and St. David's Cathedrals in Wales.

One title, Wonderful Wessex: Wilts, Somerset and Dorset was unique in this series as it contained many more pages than the others and, as far as we know, only one edition was ever published. The paper cover version was priced at sixpence and we hold a cloth-bound version in our collection, although this may have been privately bound. It is a fascinating volume with the main text comprising 270 pages followed by several appendices covering Tourist fares, Road motor-car services, Coaching arrangements and circular rail steamer and coaching trips, Cycling or walking tours, and a List of golf links. The final section, Useful Information, is itself almost 100 pages long and contains many advertisements for hotels, schools and commercial establishments, all collated within the major towns of the area.

Books by other authors

Whilst the covers of the angling books from 1925 show a distinct departure from the other plainer covers of the period, it is the cover of the Caveman to Roman book, published in 1926, which stands out as it is boldly coloured. This book was written by Edward J.Burrow and printed by the Cheltenham Press, as was the Through the Window - Paddington to Killarney book published in the same year which uses the identical block orange and brown colours. The book promoting the Channel Islands was published jointly with the Southern Railway, and they may have influenced the cover design.

The two angling books published in 1925 cost a shilling each (1s) which was to become the standard price of the later larger travel books.

Many of the above books were bound into stiffer covers with dark red cloth or roan (cheap leather) covering and gilt lettering for use in hotels, ships and clubs, or for presentation. These editions were generally printed to a high standard on gloss paper, but in some instances the standard soft back publication would have been simply glued into a hard casing.

Larger books

The Somerset book shown below is something of a puzzle as we have three different versions in our collection, all simply dated 1934. We assume that there were therefore three different impressions of this book during the year. The editorial content of all three is the same, but the final two are not quite as tall as the first impression, as can be seen by the slight cropping of the cover illustration at the bottom. When first published, the book had several pages at the back advertising places to stay in Somerset. These are numbered 167-186, follow the index, and are correctly noted as such in the contents at the front. The second version still notes those page numbers in the contents but there are in fact fewer pages of adverts, and they are not numbered. In the final version the places to stay section has been dropped altogether, being replaced by a book list which preceeds the Index. The contents list at the front was still the same (now incorrect) as the previous two versions, but has been corrected by a pasted in slip which correctly reflects the changes and notes the book list as being 'Bibliography'. All very puzzling, perhaps brought about by dwindling numbers of advertisers willing to keep paying for inclusion in later impressions.

Hard back editions

A number of titles were also published in hard back, cloth-bound form. These editions were always priced at 2/6 (two shillings and sixpence, or half a Crown) regardless of the price of the original soft back version. As with the soft cover editions, The Cornish Riviera, Glorious Devon and Somerset each had a colour plate opposite the title page and the books written by S.P.B.Mais carried an area map on the inside covers rather than having an attached fold-out version. We know that they had colourful dust jackets, such as this example from our collection
Glorious Devon 1928 edition

Click or tap link for a larger image, which emulated the covers of the corresponding paper back versions.

The Historic Sites and Scenes of England was aimed squarely at travellers coming from America. It was printed to a high standard on gloss paper but with cheap leather binding. It included much information regarding hotels, ports and onward travel arrangements. Such binding was applied to books which were distributed to hotels and cruise-liners for promotional purposes, their content being the same as the sale editions.

~~ Click or tap on any thumbnail below to see a gallery of colour plates and maps ~~

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