DASENT, ARTHUR IRWIN.[[2]] Piccadilly in three centuries, with some account of Berkeley Square, and the Haymarket. il *$7 Macmillan 942.1
21–340
“Mr Dasent has examined minutely the ratebooks of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, St James’s, Westminster, and St George’s, Hanover-square, in which he has followed every house in Piccadilly-place through all its vicissitudes of ownership. Mr Dasent begins his history, so full of noble and historic names, from a humble tailor, one Robert Baker, who in 1612 erected the first buildings upon land covered by the present site of Piccadilly.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup) “Clarendon was the real maker of Piccadilly. The great Clarendon House, which he had barely finished before he went into exile in 1667, was the first of the Piccadilly mansions. Moreover, Clarendon sold to Lord Berkeley the site of the present Devonshire House, to Sir William Pulteney the site of Bath House, and to Sir John Denham, poet and architect, the site of Burlington House and the Albany. But Clarendon had made Piccadilly a fashionable place of residence. Mr Dasent has illustrated his book with some highly interesting old prints.” (Spec)
“His style is slipshod, he has no sense of literary values, and the result is merely a collection of odds and ends about the people and places associated with Piccadilly and its surroundings. His book is, therefore, without form, but it is by no means void, since its intrinsic interest and its scenes of ancient days reproduced in its illustrations have a permanent value as records, the entire volume bringing together a large amount of information not easily accessible elsewhere.” E. F. Edgett
+ − Boston Transcript p2 D 4 ’20 1700w
Reviewed by E. L. Pearson
+ Review 3:648 D 29 ’20 100w
“A pleasant and discursive book.”
+ Spec 125:541 O 23 ’20 320w