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The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display

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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.

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.