Allen & Morton's West-London Directory for 1867

Step into the streets of West London as they existed on a single day in 1867. This directory is not a novel, but it contains something rarer than fiction: the actual names, trades, and addresses of thousands of real people going about their lives in Victorian London. Here are the shopkeepers of Shepherd's Bush, the tradesmen of Hammersmith, the publicans and doctors and dressmakers who filled the streets of a city that would never exist again in quite this form. Published by Allen & Morton in the high noon of the British Empire, this directory captures West London at a moment of dramatic transformation, just two years before the Thames Embankment would reshape its riverside and decades before the motor car would silence its horse-drawn traffic. For historians, it's an invaluable primary source. For genealogists, it's a time machine. For anyone who has ever wondered what London looked like before the twentieth century remade it, this modest volume is an archaeology of everyday life.