The Changing Metropolis: Earliest photographs of London 1839-1879 by Gavin StampViking, 1984

Calotypes, daguerrotypes, old city streets and buildings just the same or long disappeared. The lettering on the advertisements: “Maravilla cocoa,” “India rubber & vulcanite works,” a sign for a wigmaker, est. 1760. Gaslights and the working waterfront, bridges being built across the Thames. Somerset house, the basement at the water’s very edge. The dome of St Paul’s, the steeple of St Martin-in-the-Fields. The quiet exterior of the British Museum, looking exactly as it does now, and the little church of St Mary-le-Strand, in the middle of the road. This book is really lovely, and so well-designed, from the maps on the endpapers to the shape of the type.