Museum Through a Lens: Photographs from the Natural History Museum 1880 to 1950 - Softcover

Visit the Natural History Museum - 100 years ago. Featuring a wealth of stunning black-and-white photographs from the Museum's archives, this book offers a real flavour of life at one of London's oldest and most famous visitor attractions, from Victorian times until just after the Second World War. The photographs go back as far as the 1880s, to the earliest years of the Museum, when only a few horsedrawn carriages plied the streets of South Kensington and elephants and gorillas from distant parts of the British Empire were exhibited for the first time. In later years the Museum gardens were to be dug over for vegetable production during the Second World War and whale carcasses were buried in the grounds to allow the flesh to rot away. The book focuses on the unusual events that have taken place over the years, the characters working at and visiting the Museum, and of course the awe-inspiring specimens. Ranging from the amazing to the amusing, the images are evocative and brimming with period detail. The authors are senior archivists and well placed to share their knowledge of the stories that lie behind the silver-nitrate surface of the old photographic prints.

Polly Parry is the Museum Archivist and Records Manager at the Natural History Museum, London and has an in-depth knowledge of the history of the building, its collections and people. Susan Snell is a former senior archivist at the Natural History Museum, London.