Overview

Richard Trevithick's Cornish engine' was the world's first self-propelled steam vehicle. His Penydarren engine' was the world's first railway engine. But despite his towering historic achievements, fame and fortune obstinately eluded him. An often reckless yet truly brilliant engineer, he died in poverty and relative obscurity. Anthony Burton's biography however rightly recognises him as one of the most remarkable figures in the history of the industrial revolution. His extraordinary and varied career, which took him from his native Cornwall to London, and then on to seventeen years of picaresque adventuring in South America, makes for wonderfully lively reading. Filled with dozens of illustrations and photographs, Richard Trevithick is a highly enjoyable, well researched biography that dissects the turbulent world of the industrial revolution.

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9781854108784

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'Trevithick was a giant of a man, an engineer with the temper of a buccaneer, who was furiously inventive and steadfastly independent... In a book richly flavoured with forceful characters and strong plots, Trevithick stands out. Anthony Burton has written an important history and a first-class adventure story.' Times Literary Supplement 'From behind the clouds of the Age of Steam emerges Trevithick, the visionary prophet of steam, neglected in his time and ours, the fantastically flamboyant bankrupt and failure.' The Times

Author Information

Anthony Burton is the author of a number of books in the National Trail Guides series for Aurum, including The West Highland Way, Hadrian's Wall Path, The Cotswold Way and The Ridgeway, as well as a biography of Richard Trevithick and Thomas Telford and numerous other works of industrial history. He lives in Stroud.

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