Edwardian Album - A Photographic Excursion Into A Lost Age Of Innocence

An entire world poised on the edge of disaster, but blissfully busy arranging its hat.

Edwardian Album – A Photographic Excursion into a Lost Age of Innocence (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974) by Nicolas Bentley is exactly what it sounds like: a lovingly curated stroll through the pre-1914 world, when the sun supposedly never set on the Empire, children wore sailor suits for no clear reason, and absolutely nobody had yet read the small print on the 20th century.

Bentley raids the family albums of the age and assembles a gallery of:

• Ladies in impossibly elaborate hats standing in gardens pretending not to notice the camera.

• Gentlemen with waxed moustaches radiating the calm assurance of people who have never had to understand income tax.

• Seaside holidays, garden parties, bicycles, small dogs, tennis racquets and an undercurrent of “nothing truly awful could possibly happen to us.”

• Streets, shops, trams and ships from a Britain that thinks it’s permanent – all caught in crisp monochrome just before history presses the “reset” button.

It’s nostalgia with a raised eyebrow: an Edwardian world where everything looks charmingly orderly, provided you don’t ask too many questions about class, empire or working conditions. Bentley supplies the captions, commentary and quiet wit; the photographs provide the evidence that this so-called “age of innocence” was very busy posing for posterity with great seriousness and the occasional absurd hat.

This copy is supplied by Crappy Old Books, and is serenely graded Condition: Good, which in our carefully unscientific taxonomy means:

• The dust jacket (if present) shows honest shelfwear – light rubbing, a nick here, a short tear there – more “been on and off the shelf for decades” than “abandoned in a trunk on a doomed liner.”

• The boards underneath are firm and respectable, like a well-kept Edwardian semi that’s had the same net curtains since 1908.

• The pages are clean, tight and pleasantly toned – think “soft sepia photograph” rather than “salvaged from a flooded basement.”

• Minor bumps, scuffs and perhaps a discreet previous owner’s name are officially classified as authentic period patina and are included at no extra charge.

ISBN: 0297767593, for the cataloguer who enjoys assigning neat modern numbers to times when addresses didn’t even have postcodes yet.

Recommended if:

• You like your history served as photographs first, analysis second, nostalgia and irony carefully mixed throughout.

• You’ve ever looked at a pre-war group portrait and thought, “Half of you have no idea what’s coming, do you?”

• You want a book that visitors will idly open, chuckle at, and then slowly fall silent over as they notice the dates.

Edwardian Album – A Photographic Excursion into a Lost Age of Innocence: sunlit lawns, stiff collars, extravagant millinery and a civilisation calmly walking toward the cliff edge – now in comfortably timeworn but sturdy Good condition, ready to sit on your shelf like a family album from a set of relatives you never had and are faintly relieved you didn’t.

Keep browsing: See more History books Other books by Nicolas Bentley