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Introduction: The
Great exhibition of 1851 was a defining moment in
Victorian Society. It brought together every important
type and process of manufacture then known, at a time
when life was being transformed by the Industrial
Revolution. The idea of progress, coupled with the
growth of wealth and prosperity through manufacture
and innovation captured the popular imagination of
mid-Victorian Britain.
The Town Library is lucky
to possess good copies of many of the catalogues and
publications printed to accompany the Great Exhibition,
or produced afterwards as a celebratory record of
the event. The Collection also includes Reports of
the Commissioners for the Exhibition, and some scrapbooks
of ephemeral material collected at the Exhibition
itself.
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