Printer and Quaker, born in Salford, Greater Manchester, NW England, UK. He became a Manchester mapmaker, but is best known for the series of railway guides (Bradshaws) which he originated in 1839.
George Bradshaw (July 29, 1801 - August, 1853) was an English cartographer, printer and publisher and the originator of the railway timetable.
Biography
Bradshaw was born at Windsor Bridge, Pendleton, Lancashire.
He married in 1839.
Bradshaw's railway timetables
Bradshaw's name was already known as the publisher of Bradshaw's Maps of Inland Navigation, which detailed the canals of Lancashire and Yorkshire, when, on October 19, 1839, soon after the introduction of railways, the world's first railway timetable was published in Manchester. It cost sixpence and was a cloth-bound book entitled Bradshaw's Railway Time Tables and Assistant to Railway Travelling, the title being changed in 1840 to Bradshaw's Railway Companion, and the price raised to one shilling.
In December 1841, acting on a suggestion made by his London agent, William Jones Adams, Bradshaw reduced the price of his timetables to the original sixpence, and began to issue them monthly under the title Bradshaw's Monthly Railway Guide. From then on the book, in the familiar yellow wrapper, became synonymous with its publisher: for Victorians and Edwardians alike, a railway timetable was "a Bradshaw", no matter by which railway company it had been issued and whether Bradshaw had been responsible for its production or not.
The eight page edition of 1841 had grown to 32 pages by 1845 and to 946 pages by 1898. When, in 1865, Punch praised Bradshaw's publications, it stated that "seldom has the gigantic intellect of man been employed upon a work of greater utility." Bradshaw's publications minutely recorded all changes and became the standard manual for rail travel for more than a century.
Reprints of old Bradshaws are available, for example the April 1910 edition, republished in 2002 by Orion Publishing (ISBN 1-84212-534-6).
References in literature
19th century and early 20th century novelists make frequent references to a character's "Bradshaw". Perhaps the most famous example is by Sherlock Holmes in the Valley of Fear, "the vocabulary of Bradshaw is nervous and terse, but limited."
Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide
In June 1847 the first number of Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide was issued, giving the timetables of the Continental railways, just as Bradshaw's Monthly Railway Guide gave the timetables of the railways of the United Kingdom. The Continental Railway Guide eventually grew to over 1,000 pages, including timetables, guidebook and hotel directory.
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