EVERY TRAVELLER'S GUIDE TO THE RAILWAYS OF ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, IRELAND, BELGIUM, FRANCE, AND GERMANY; Containing Correct Time and Fare Tables of Every Railway. Illustrated with Maps of the Country Through which the Railway Lines traverse. Compiled from Original Sources.

First edition, first printing. Publisher's original decorative card wrappers with titles in black to the upper cover. Illustrated with a charming woodcut frontispiece of a train crossing a viaduct and nine railway maps (eight of them folding). A very good copy, the binding a little fragile (although remains secure) with the spine largely perished, a few marks to the covers and a little wear to the corners. The contents with some scattered foxing and creasing to page corners are otherwise in good order with the maps largely clean and free from damage (three of the maps have a little more foxing, and one has a small marginal tear). Pleasingly, the timetable displays signs of contemporary use, with its original owner crossing out 'Every Traveller's' from the title page and neatly inserting his own name. He has also underlined some train times and added an annotation to one page: "Coaches leave Reading for Basingstoke at 10.10am 4.5pm", presumably for clarification purposes.

An ambitious and well-illustrated early railway guide, covering several continental railways in addition to those of Britain. As Tuck declares in the preface: "No apology need be offered for presenting to the public this little compendium. Railways will ultimately become the highways of the world; already may the traveller between the rising and setting of the same sun, breakfast in London and sleep in Paris, while Rome will soon be brought within six days journey of the metropolis of England, and this being so, [this work] must be indispensable to the traveller for commerce, and the tourist for pleasure". It is unclear how far the contemporary owner of the present copy made it, but even if it was ultimately only just to Basingstoke, it is still very satisfying to find such an early guide with signs of personal use and engagement. Rare, only four copies listed on Copac (LSE, Nat. Rail Museum, Oxford, Aberdeen), not in the BL.