Autobiography ('Landscape Trilogy')
LTC Rolt's autobiography was originally published in three volumes, Landscape with Machines in 1971, Landscape with Canals in 1977 and Landscape with Figures in 1992 - the last two after his death.
The History Press are releasing three new separate volumes of Tom Rolt's Autobiography in February 2017.
The three volumes of autobiography are the testament of a man who has given literary shape to the history of the Industrial Revolution and who had a unique gift for imparting to others his knowledge, his enthusiasm and his love for life.
In the first volume of Rolt’s stunning autobiography,
Landscape with Machines, the focus is on his younger days, from childhood to trainee engineer, it is imbued with the author’s love of England and his intense feeling for the beauties of the English countryside.
Landscape with Canals, the second volume, describes Rolt’s realisation of his dream to live afloat and the meandering voyages through the secret green water-lanes of England and Wales. He details the formation of the IWA and the part his first book,
Narrow Boat, played in the beginnings of the canal preservation movement.
In
Landscape with Figures, written during the last years of his life, Rolt gives an account of the early days of the Talyllyn Railway, his involvement in vintage car rallies, and vividly recreates his travels on the Tralee–Dingle Light Railway in remote West Kerry. Intermingled with these are his struggles to become a writer of repute.
The Landscape Trilogy
These three volumes were also published in one volume, called
The Landscape Trilogy, in 2001 and in paperback in 2005, both by Sutton Publishing. The three volumes were also re-issued as a single volume in 2009 by The History Press.
"Tom had said to a friend 'I have had a happy life'. The diversity of that life with its pleasures and pains, its love and enthusiasms, amused and amusing, and above all its noble effort to make sense of its experiences, lies within these pages."
Sonia Rolt in her introduction to the Landscape Trilogy.
The first editions
