3 Review(s)

Copper from Cornwall, a hand-drill from Hampshire, elephant teeth from Sudan, and snuff-boxes from Switzerland. The Great Exhibition of 1851 included some 13,000 natural and man-made objects in the largest collection of materials and inventions the world had ever seen. This single-volume catalogue lists all the items on show with their origin and location. With the aid of its maps and lists, visitors were able to navigate the Crystal Palace with ease, despite its immense size. In 'The Catalogue's Account of Itself', included at the end of the book, Charles Dickens describes with great verve the complex compilation process of the catalogue, completed just hours before the Exhibition opened. New arrivals necessitated several corrected printings, and this is the fourth edition. A truly fascinating record of the state of the world seen through material objects in the mid-nineteenth century, this volume will delight both the curious browser and the scholar.