The Great Exhibition

The Great Exhibition of 1851 was the world's first international exposition of manufactured goods, inventions, works of art and artefacts from many cultures. A showcase of British manufacturing supremacy, an educational extravaganza, a lesson to foreigners and a deep source of public fascination, the Exhibition was closely connected with Queen Victoria's consort, Prince Albert, who put much effort into having it sited in Hyde Park against stiff opposition.

Protesters feared the disappearance of the park under tons of bricks and mortar, but when the great structure was eventually chosen and built, it silenced dissenters and became the most famous new building in the world. Designed by Joseph Paxton, it was a vast cathedral of glass, prefabricated off-site. Measuring 1851 feet in length and covering 26 acres, the building was viewed by its detractors as a "giant cucumber frame" and by Punch magazine as the "Crystal Palace" — a name which stuck.

The Great Exhibition ran from May to October 1851 and in that time the 100,000 exhibits were seen by over six million people who came to celebrate Britain's industrial ascendancy and a renewed confidence in the possibilities of peaceful social progress.

Financially, the Exhibition was a greater success than anyone dared hope, and the profit was invested in the advancement of education in art, industry and science at a new "Albertopolis" in London — containing eventually the South Kensington museums, the Albert Hall, Royal College of Music and Imperial College of Science and Technology.

This volume provides an accessible history of the way the Exhibition was organized and took place. It also delves into its wider significance and the historical debates surrounding it. New insight is provided into the event's part in the Victorian construction of the modern world and in particular to its relevance to the millennium and the new "Great Exhibition" at Greenwich.