The World 100 Years Ago

To place these unique photographs in their context Michael Wynn Jones has drawn on the eye-witness accounts of many eminent contemporary travellers: among them Gustave Dore on London, Anthony Trollope on South Africa, Mark Twain on Europe, Henry James on England. They observed an era of change. The slave trade still existed in Africa, the Ottoman Empire was dying and the sun shone bright on Britain's Empire. But now came also the foundation of new political systems, the military rise of Germany, the invention of electricity, the telephone and the photograph - and on the lighter side, lawn tennis and the bustle. An amazing age of energy, invention and, above all, curiosity, here presented by the comparatively recent invention of the camera with its new, documentary style...