Description

Robert Hale, Published 1968. Hardcover, 208 pp.; 23 cm; First Edition; The Portrait Series; illustrated with 32 black-and-white photographs by the author on 16 plates, 3 maps in text.

Condition & notes

In Acceptable condition with an Acceptable dust jacket. Pale pink and white textured paper over boards, metallic pink lettering on spine, light bumping to edges and corners, heavier bumping and a 1 inch tear to the paper at rear hinge near foot of spine, lower edge of rear board crushed with a 1/2 inch tear to the paper. Binding tight. Green felt-tip remainder stripe along bottom edge of text block. Rear free endpaper creased and rippled along lower half, small crease to lower edge of front free endpaper, pages otherwise clean and unmarked. Illustrated dust jacket (Tower Bridge raised, in a cream oval on red, publisher's price 25s unclipped) has a 2 inch tear at foot of spine running up from the rear panel and across the spine, and a several inch tear beside the head of the spine, both repaired from the verso with tape; lower edge of rear panel also reinforced with tape from the verso, not visible from the front; 1 inch tear to top edge of rear panel; mild surface wear, soiling and toning. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. The tidal Thames in 1968, from Teddington Lock down through the bridged river, the Pool of London, and the enclosed docks to the estuary at Southend and Sheppey, written at the moment the Port of London still worked the river and just before the upriver docks began to close. Cracknell, an agricultural economist who grew up on the Essex shore and later wrote the standard history of Canvey Island, divides the river into three parts (the bridged river within London, the Port of London, and the developing estuary from Tilbury to the Tongue) and gives each its own character: embankments, bridges, and riverside buildings; the five dock systems and their nineteenth-century rivalry; the marshland villages, forts, and new container port at Tilbury. His own photographs record the Collier shooting Westminster Bridge, the Embankment art show, the Prospect of Whitby, the Royal Docks, and the Kingsferry bridges, and a postscript imagines the Thames in the year 2000. Companion volume to J. H. B. Peel's Portrait of the Thames (the non-tidal river) in Hale's Portrait series; this is the only edition. Index. Contents: Not One River but Three; The River and the City; Part One, The Bridged River: To God and the Bridge; The River Embanked; The River Exploited; The River Enjoyed; The River Ennobled; Part Two, The Port of London: Introducing the Port; The Pool of London and the Isle of Dogs; Woolwich Reach, the Royal Docks, and Barking; Halfway Reach to Northfleet Hope; Tilbury and Gravesend, Gateway to the Port; Part Three, Tilbury to the Tongue, The Developing Estuary: Introducing the Estuary; Gravesend Reach and the Lower Hope; The Hundred of Hoo; From Wooden Schooner to Super Tanker; The "Netherlandish Community"; The Four "S's": Southend, Shoeburyness, Sheerness and Sheppey; Postscript: The Thames in A.D. 2000, A Vision of the Future; Index.

Catalog notes

Description

Condition & notes