Victorian and Edwardian London from old photographs

by John Betjeman

This book is illustrated entirely by contemporary photographs. The earliest pictures belong to the 1840s, when Fox Talbot's camera was just in time to record the Old Hungerford Suspension Bridge and the erection of Nelson's Column. The latest show the London of seventy years further on, when the motor-car had begun to supplant the carriage, the hansom, and the horse-drawn omnibus. These photographs illustrate every aspect and district of London. The emphasis is on the streets, and the people and traffic in them, rather than on the buildings. Here are pictures of a vanished population of street traders and entertainers: the muffin men, umbrella menders, ginger-beer sellers, sweeps, dancing bears and organ grinders, flower girls, rabbit sellers, and Punch-and-Judy shows which were an everyday feature of London street life. The pictures in which they appear are often strikingly beautiful, though whether they are so from the conscious intention of their photographers it might be hard to sa