After sampling the delights of the Great Exhibition, you could attend Mr. Thackeray's lectures, read Mr. Melville's new book, attend a "Grand Hippo Dramatic Production" at Astley's, or visit Mr. Gould's display of Humming-birds at the Zoological Gardens.
Astley's Royal Amphitheatre . . . Monday, June 23rd, 1851 . . .
KSRL: G126 v.3
A poster advertising the "Grand Hippo Dramatic Production of 'Eleanor the Amazon.' " Astley's was the great equestrian circus across the River Thames from the Houses of Parliament, and was in business from 1777 to 1895. This volume is one of three scrapbooks full of posters, theatrical prints, ephemera and news clippings, owned at one time by M. Wilson Disher, British theatre historian, and at another by C.B. Cochran, a leading theatrical producer in London in the 1930s (who engaged Rodgers and Hart to write for one of his shows)."Mr. Gould's collection of humming birds in the Zoological Gardens, Hyde Park." Illustrated London News. 12 June 1852, pp. 457-458.
KSRL: G498
Gould, "the English Audubon," lent to the Zoological Society of London his collection of mounted hummingbirds and these were exhibited in a special building erected near the Lion House. The exhibition attracted over 75,000 visitors and without doubt added to the popularity of the Zoological Gardens in the year of the Great Exhibition.
John Gould was one of a group of distinguished scientists who dined one evening in 1853 in the half-completed body of a concrete Iguanodon, in the grounds of the Sydenham Crystal Palace-there are currently plans afoot to restore the "geological islands" on which the dinosaur figures were placed.
The Spencer Library holds the largest collection in the world of original drawings used to produce Mr. Gould's published prints of birds and animals.
Herman Melville, 1819-1891: Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. New York, Harper & Brothers, 1851.
KSRL: B2047 1st American edition.
William Makepeace Thackeray, 1811-1863: The English humourists of the eighteenth century. A series of lectures, delivered in England, Scotland, and the United States of America. London, Smith, elder, 1853. KSRL: O'Hegarty B417
Six lectures were advertised in the Illustrated London News during the year 1851, to be presented on Thursday, May 21, and on the five succeeding Thursdays. Reserved seats cost £2/2/- (2 guineas) for the series; single, unreserved seats cost 7/6d. This is the first printed edition, published at the end of Thackeray's international tour.