The 1968 edition with the authors original photographs and an introduction by Tom Rolt.
Those of you that were young in the 1970’s may remember a children's TV serial and book with the same title as the above book. Bill Grundy’s book and the serial that had produced it were both loosely based on a journey that had taken place 60 years before and which had itself resulted in the publication of one of the best known canal books of all time.
The author E Temple Thurston was a professional author, playwright and poet very popular in the Edwardian era with over 40 published books to his credit. Many of these had been made into early silent movies and its a great shame that the Flower of Gloster does not appear to be one of them.
The Flower of Gloster. First UK Edition. 1911.
The book came out in 1911 and with its green cloth binding, gilt titles and simple embossed illustration of a narrow boat; is a classic example of Edwardian book design and production at it’s best.
It must have been sometime in the spring of 1910 that the author hired a Thames and Severn canal boat in Oxford for a month. Joseph Phipkin the owner recommended canal boatman Eynsham Harry as a suitable captain for the voyage and together with Fanny the horse as motive power the three set off along the Oxford and Warwick canals, Stratford on Avon Canal and (of the greatest interest to todays readers) – the Stroudwater and Thames and Severn canals on what was to become one of the most legendry canal voyages of all time.
The books prose is Edwardian and typically florid but don’t let that put you off as the conversations between the author and boatman ‘Eynsham Harry’ are as interesting and informative as the journey they undertook. The chapters dealing with their journey through the Stroudwater & Thames & Severn Canals are memorable because although they were not the first or the last to write of journeying through these waterways (Geoffrey Boumphrey passed through the canal in the mid 1930’s); accounts of Thames & Severn Canal navigation are few and far between and accounts with photographs even more so.
Frontispiece illustration of Chalford – Thames &Severn Canal. From 1911 First Edition.
In the 1968 David & Charles reprint of the book (See First Illustration) ; L T C Rolt who wrote a new introduction, managed to include photographs taken on the actual journey by Temple Thurston which did not appear in any of the original copies of the book. These original editions were illustrated by artist Ernest Dakin as in the illustration above. Thus we find, for example, photographs of ‘The Flower of Gloster’ at Cropredy Lock on the Oxford Canal, a trow on the Stroudwater navigation and portraits of such memorable characters as Mrs Izod the ferrywoman on the Avon and ‘Old Willum’ the lengthsman on the Thames & Severn Canal, waiting, as Rolt remarks in his introduction ‘for the boats that never came’.
The ‘Flower of Gloster’ is a book from a vanished age. In its pages we discover a picturesque and romantic vision of an England which, even as the book was being published, was rapidly disappearing for ever. All the stolid country characters and quiet country places encountered in the book harken back to an agrarian pre industrial past – pre motor and pre railway. A countryside which was placid, uneventful but hard.
‘Flower of Gloster’ Second Edition 1913.
The book enjoyed a modest success and was reprinted in 1913 in the same format but this time with a grey cloth cover and black titling and illustration. Such was the popularity of the book that in 1918 the publishers William & Norgate issued a cheap unillustrated edition.
The 1918 cheap unillustrated Edt’n.
There has been some discussion over the years as to whether Temple Thurston's journey actually took place in one long voyage as he describes or whether it was in fact the result of a series of shorter journeys and travels. David Blagrove discussed this in some detail in an early ‘Waterways World’ magazine article of December 1972. However the events occurred, it doesn’t really matter, I suppose, for the events described seem authentic enough and the authors photographs are indisputable evidence of the authors first hand familiarity with his subject matter,
I include also, an illustration of the first American edition, printed and issued in New York by Dodd Mead & Co in 1912.
This US edition is identical to the first British editions apart from the early ‘Art Deco’ cover illustration which was changed to include an illustration of a boat more in tune with the average American’s conception of a canal barge.
First US edition 1912.
Second hand copies of all the editions are fairly readily available but most canal and waterway enthusiasts will want to read the modern reprints of 1968 & 1972 for the inclusion of the author’s photographs & LTC Rolt’s memorable introduction which prefaces the book in a manner I envy.
For dyed in the wool collectors like myself (I know I am a sad case) – the first edition is a must, as it is such a joy to see and handle, as, the book production values have, like the characters in the book, completely disappeared.