MEMORIES OF TIMES PAST: London

Beautiful reprint of the pioneering 1904 colour book Familiar London with Rose Barton's original paintings enlarged and placed in contemporary context with related images from period maps and postcards, newspapers and railway tickets and line art as well as a narrative on London in the early 20th century. There are images of people standing in the Strand waiting for election news about Home Rule for Ireland and Gladstone's advocacy of Irish rights with an image of a crowd of well-dressed Victorians waiting patiently outside the offices of the Daily Graphic. There is the Changing the Guard, Whitehall (little changed), Cromwell Road and the museum district, Villiers Street, Charing Cross where Rudyard Kipling resided at number 43, small self-confident children watching ducks in a London park, tiny children walking hand in hand under Hungerford Bridge, a horse and carriage on a hot afternoon in Piccadilly, sailing boats on the Serpentine, waiting for royalty, and lining the streets of Horse Guards Parade and Hyde Park, the Royal Exchange on Lombard Street, the old River Wall at Chelsea, the dark water and overhanging warehouses beautifully painted in greys and blues and the completely unchanged entrance to the Apothecaries' Garden, now known as Chelsea Physic Garden. We counted 61 exquisite images from gentleman's clubs to flower girls, Nelson's Column in a fog, to hospitals and the Bell Inn, Holborn. Eight maps are reproduced from the 1902 Philips' handy-volume Atlas of London with information on public buildings, railways, tramways and steamboats reproduced across two pages in colour and with postcards alongside and an explanation about the original book and the new world of colour printing when the late Victorians and Edwardians embraced technology and the strides in printing and ink technology. Also maps on endpapers. 26 x 29.2cm, 176pp, colour.