London

A fascinating illustrated six-volume account, published 1841–4, of what was then the greatest city in the world.

Charles Knight (Author)

9781108073974, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 8 May 2014

426 pages, 102 b/w illus.
25.4 x 17.8 x 2.2 cm, 0.74 kg

The publisher and writer Charles Knight (1791–1873) was apprenticed to his printer father, but later became a journalist and then proprietor of various periodicals and magazines, many of which were driven by his concern for the education of the poor. As an author, he published a variety of works, including The Old Printer and the Modern Press (also reissued in this series). He claimed that this six-volume work on the architecture and history of London, published between 1841 and 1844, was neither a history nor a survey of London, but looked 'at the Present through the Past, and at the Past through the Present'. It relies on the skills of eminent artists to bring both the present and the past of London to life, and is arranged thematically rather than chronologically or geographically. This is a fascinating account of what was then the greatest city in the world.

76. Beer
77. Banks
78. The Fleet Prison
79. Fleet marriages
80.-84. Westminster Abbey
85. Old London rogueries
86. London burials
87. London fires
88. Billingsgate
89. London churches at the end of the fourteenth century
90. Sketches of the history of crime and police in London
91. Old St Paul's
92. Old St Paul's (cont.)
93. Somerset House
94. The Old Bailey
95. Public refreshment
96. New St Paul's
97. New St Paul's (cont.)
98. Inns of Court
99. Inns of Court (cont.)
100. The Reading Room of the British Museum.

Subject Areas: British & Irish history [HBJD1]