LONDON: The Great Transformation 1860-1920

Bibliophile is thrilled to finally stock first time discounted this monumental 480 page photographic tome. Again we are mesmerised by these early photographs of London. After ten years' exclusive research, the author has assembled over 800 carefully restored historic photographs selected from 25 different archives in the UK and overseas. They depict London on the cusp of immense change as the fabric of medieval and the Georgian city was transformed by the forces of modernity. There is a rich collection of full plate images preserved at the Bishopsgate Institute plus photographs taken by pioneering photographers of the period, brought here together for the first time. The volume reveals the twin poles of prosperity and poverty which shared the capital's myriad neighbourhoods. The construction of the great new buildings of age like the Crystal Palace and St Pancreas Station alongside new roads and railways wreaked havoc. The medieval buildings of the City of London and the ancient coaching inns of Southwark, the squalid alleys and yards teeming with the destitute and outcasts, the riverside warehouses and wharves of Bankside and Lambeth contrast with the grand commercial buildings of the City and West End as well as the emerging middle-class suburbs spreading out beyond. Behatted ladies carrying umbrellas, horses and carts, trolleybuses, young boys in flat caps and boots and breeches, children in bonnets, this truly is a chronicle of a changing city. There are cheesemonger shops, the Old Dick Whittington Inn, the Cloth Fair from 1920, churchyards, Newgate Prison, 32 Botolph Lane interior in 1860 allegedly occupied by Christopher Wren and one of the City's last surviving grand mansions with a magnificent carved staircase. Theatres, bridges, advertising, Westminster Abbey and the Clock Tower of the Palace of Westminster with a silk top hatted gentleman accompanying two ladies in a bustling street scene, the many monuments, Buckingham Palace blackened with soot, Leicester Square and the MGM Cinema, Regent's Street, construction at Bayswater Station, thatched cottages in Hornsey and people peering over walls and out through windows, to drunken factory girls fighting on a roof top, ragamuffin children wearing stained clothes, disabled children in Victoria Park Mile End Road, proud butchers outside their shop in Watney Street 1910, the Muffin Man carrying his wares on his head and ringing his bell as he delivers food door to door. Hours of wonderful moving browsing in this unforgettable book. 480pp, 29.8 x 25.5cm. Hundreds of illus.
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