[Anon.], London as It Is To-Day: Where to Go, and What to See, during the Great Exhibition (1851), extract

With the recent and rapid expansion of the railway system and the prospect of large numbers of tourists from home and abroad visiting the Exhibition, publishers seized the opportunity to produce a range of guides to London. This chapter presents an example from the well-established publisher Henry G. Clarke and Co., with premises in Exeter Change, the Strand. Clarke produced guides to certain celebrated London buildings, in both English and French. The chapter coveys the noise, hubbub, excitement and immensity of London as a thriving, expanding and wealthy capital city. London, considered in the aggregate, comprises the City and its liberties, the City of Westminster, the Tower Hamlets, and the Boroughs of Finsbury, Marylebone, Southwark, and Lambeth, with their respective suburbs; besides many villages in Middlesex and Surrey, which, though originally distinct, now form integral portions of the great capital of the British Empire.