The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display [Hardcover]

Dr. Jeffrey A. Auerbach (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 1999

The Great Exhibition of 1851, held in London's spectacular Crystal Palace, was the first world's fair and the first industrial exhibition. It was also much more, Jeffrey Auerbach demonstrates in this fascinating book: the Great Exhibition was the single defining event for nineteenth-century Britons between the Battle of Waterloo (1815) and the Diamond Jubilee (1897).

Enhanced by dozens of illustrations, this wide-ranging account of the Great Exhibition reveals for the first time how the extraordinary occasion was conceived and planned, why it was such an unexpected success, what it actually meant to the millions of Britons who visited it, and what it came to mean in later generations. The book challenges the common view that the exhibition symbolized peace, progress, prosperity, and the emergence of an industrial middle class. Auerbach suggests instead that the Great Exhibition became a cultural battlefield on which proponents of different visions of industrialization, modernization, and internationalism fought for ascendancy in the struggle for a new national identity. Drawing on extensive archival research in such diverse areas as politics, economics, social structure, and international relations, this book contributes not only to our understanding of British national identity in the Victorian era but also to our broader understanding of the formation of national identities in the modern age.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (November 10, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300080077
• ISBN-13: 978-0300080070
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 7.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,892,843 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dry, but Rewarding (with patience), September 21, 2006

By 

King Gama "A highly disagreeable man" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display (Hardcover)

This is a general study of the first "World's Fair" and industrial exhibition. The book is divided into three sections: Making, Meaning and Memory. They cover: the difficulties in preparing and constructing the exposition and its unique home (the 'Crystal Palace'): the significance of the exhibition as it reflected the views of world, economy and class that reigned in Great Britain at the time: and the after-effect that it had on the psyche of that nation - well into the twentieth century. The text requires a certain knowledge of history that could make it hard on the non-Anglophile, but it is well researched and noted. My copy of the book is hardbound and printed on a sturdy matte paper that reproduces the illustraions well. I wish, however, that those illustrations were larger because they are quite evocative and intelligently chosen - particularly the color lithographs from souvenir books of the day.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Behind the scenes at the Great Exhibition, November 1, 2002

By 

P. C. Kidd (Victoria, B.C. Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display (Hardcover)

Unlike so many publications on the subject, Auerbach's spends most of its 200-odd pages examining the complex and fascinating politics, economics, and above all, marketing, which went into making the Great Exhibition such a remarkable success. His research is broadly-based and astonishingly thorough, ranging from letters and diaries kept during the period by members of various classes, to newspaper reports and journal articles. The writing is clear, concise, and engaging, and the approach Auerbach chooses for the construction of his argument is logical both in it's chronological focus, and in the introduction of the many tangential portions which support the author's main argument. Although the actual exhibits are dealt with in fairly cursory fashion, this book is much more revealing of what the Great Exhibition says of the time and people which created it, an area so often neglected by those who focus on exhibits like Pugin's Mediaeval Court alone. As a study of mid-Victorian values The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display is quite brilliant.