Channel Crossing

First edition, first impression. 116pp, with some tables and charts in text.  Blue cloth-covered boards, gilt titles to spine.  8vo.  An ex lending library copy with the usual markings on the front free endpaper and copyright page.  The binding is a little fragile, loosening pages 63-94, else internally neat, clean and bright.  In its original illustrated dust wrapper, shelf worn and rubbed at edges with library labels over the spine.  Dust wrapper in a protective film sleeve, taped to volume, and itself shelf worn and tatty, with additional labelling over spine.

A very hard to find volume on the history of the Manby, Wilson and Harwood family and its various branches, focussing on the late 18th to late 19th centuries.  The Manby lineage goes back to Lincolnshire in Norman times, had branches in Yorkshire, Norfolk, Essex and Jamaica.  The family of the author, Hereward Davies were yeoman in Shropshire about 1600 and century later associated with the ‘Salop Industry’ of Abraham Darby, eventually appearing on the French Roll Call and in the Shrewsbury Burgess Roll in 1796 alongside the Harwoods.