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victorian221bI first came across this book while doing research for a mini-fic request that I still haven't filled (but fully intend to!). It can be found on archive.org.
An overview of motor cars in Britain from the earliest days of the sport, it was written by Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, whose father was one of the pioneers of British motoring. (A bit of family history: The elder Lord Montagu wanted a mascot for his Rolls-Royce and commissioned a sculpture based on his mistress at the time. This subsequently became the Spirit of Ecstasy, the winged mascot that has been placed on every Rolls-Royce since 1911. Another fact about the elder Lord Montagu: He and the same mistress were on a ship that was shot down in the Mediterranean during WWI by a German U-boat. The mistress drowned, but Montagu was able to get away.)
Montagu's son, the author of this book, has an interesting history of his own. Besides founding Britain's National Motor Museum, the younger Montagu, who was bisexual, was imprisoned during the 1950s for gay sex under the same statute used to convict Oscar Wilde. He served a 12-month sentence, but his trial caused a public backlash which eventually led, some 10 years later, to the legalization of homosexuality in Britain.
(The National Motor Museum website has some great examples of cars from the Edwardian era.)
Back to the book: It has a very helpful British-American glossary (did you know that an estate car in Britain is what we in the US call a station wagon?) and many photos and diagrams are littered throughout the text. You get a sense of just how precarious motor travel was in late Victorian and Edwardian England: Windshields at that time, for example, were too heavy and could break too easily, potentially causing serious harm to the driver and passengers, and so manufacturers dispensed with them and motorists as a result took to wearing the goggles lampooned in The Wind in the Willows.
There's plenty of information on the inner workings of the early cars (which was useful for a plot point in this long-delayed fic of mine) and I learned, too, that cars and motoring were not initially popular in Britain until the Prince of Wales took them up in the early 1900s. There are many other useful factoids besides this, if you find yourself unexpectedly writing a story in which Holmes or Watson decide to take a spin in an automobile.
An overview of motor cars in Britain from the earliest days of the sport, it was written by Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, whose father was one of the pioneers of British motoring. (A bit of family history: The elder Lord Montagu wanted a mascot for his Rolls-Royce and commissioned a sculpture based on his mistress at the time. This subsequently became the Spirit of Ecstasy, the winged mascot that has been placed on every Rolls-Royce since 1911. Another fact about the elder Lord Montagu: He and the same mistress were on a ship that was shot down in the Mediterranean during WWI by a German U-boat. The mistress drowned, but Montagu was able to get away.)
Montagu's son, the author of this book, has an interesting history of his own. Besides founding Britain's National Motor Museum, the younger Montagu, who was bisexual, was imprisoned during the 1950s for gay sex under the same statute used to convict Oscar Wilde. He served a 12-month sentence, but his trial caused a public backlash which eventually led, some 10 years later, to the legalization of homosexuality in Britain.
(The National Motor Museum website has some great examples of cars from the Edwardian era.)
Back to the book: It has a very helpful British-American glossary (did you know that an estate car in Britain is what we in the US call a station wagon?) and many photos and diagrams are littered throughout the text. You get a sense of just how precarious motor travel was in late Victorian and Edwardian England: Windshields at that time, for example, were too heavy and could break too easily, potentially causing serious harm to the driver and passengers, and so manufacturers dispensed with them and motorists as a result took to wearing the goggles lampooned in The Wind in the Willows.
There's plenty of information on the inner workings of the early cars (which was useful for a plot point in this long-delayed fic of mine) and I learned, too, that cars and motoring were not initially popular in Britain until the Prince of Wales took them up in the early 1900s. There are many other useful factoids besides this, if you find yourself unexpectedly writing a story in which Holmes or Watson decide to take a spin in an automobile.
