District Railway Map for Greater Britain Exhibition
SKU: 8789Title:
District Railway Map for Greater Britain Exhibition
Date of publication:
1899
Printed Measurement:
21 x 27 cm folding map
Publisher(s):
Colour:
original
Mapmaker(s):
Engraver(s):
WE Soar
The District Railway Guide to the Greater Britain Exhibition, the Gigantic Wheel, &c, at Earls Court
Illustrated guide book, pp. 54, somewhat browned, colour printed pictorial wrappers, rubbed and worn; ‘The ‘District Railway’ Miniature Map of London’ tipped in, 21 x 27 cm, bottom edge frayed, overprint of Britannia at the festival site, plan of the exhibition and travel information on verso.
The Greater Britain Exhibition was one of Imre Kiralfy’s annual spectacles at Earl’s Court. It included a section on picturesque England, the Great Wheel built in 1895 for the Empire of India Exhibition, baby incubators and demonstrations of opium smoking. However, it was primarily a colonial exhibition featuring reconstructed kraals or villages, ‘where are housed the two-hundred or so Matabele, Swazis and Basutis who have been specially engaged’. There was also a section on gold mining in the Witwatersrand, particularly topical just prior to the outbreak of the second Anglo-Boer War.