The Great Exhibition, 1851

This Sourcebook is the first of its kind to provide a comprehensive selection of carefully edited primary material on the subject of the Great Exhibition of 1851. The book allows teachers and students to study the iconic event of the Victorian age in its original context through the eyes of those who witnessed and wrote about it. The sources reproduced here – many for the first time in their entirety – include excerpts from the official guidebook to the Exhibition, newspapers and magazines, diaries and correspondence, poetry and stories and the records and correspondence of the Royal Commission. The sources are arranged by themes in six chapters – Origins and Organisation, Display, Nation, Empire and Ethnicity, Gender, Class and Afterlives – prefaced by critical introductions that establish the major scholarly trends in writing about the Exhibition. The book is hospitable to both new readers requiring an introduction to the subject and experienced researchers in the field looking for a resource where the key accounts of the Exhibition can all be found in one place.