‘Turn where you will in his pages, you get some interesting glimpse which opens up the past and illumines the present.’—The Contemporary Review.
‘A handsome and very interesting book is the result, for which the curious reader and the student will alike be grateful.... Gives an admirable impression of the times.’—The Spectator.
‘It is excellently planned and very ably and agreeably executed.... The chief charm of this work is the pleasantness of the style in which it is written—easy, clear, and individual. To the accuracy of the ideal historian Sir Walter added the picturesqueness of the popular novelist.’—The Globe.
‘It forms a sumptuous volume, and is marked, of course, by minute research and enthusiastic interest. Will be a thoroughly engrossing study for all those—and they are now many—to whom the past of the Empire’s capital is a subject of the keenest fascination.’—St. James’s Gazette.
‘To praise this book were superfluous. Sir Walter was ideally suited for the task which he set himself. He was an antiquarian, but not a Dryasdust; he had the topographical sense, but he spares us measurements; he was pleasantly discursive; if he moralised he was never tedious; he had the novelist’s eye for the romantic. Above all, he loved and reverenced London. Though only a Londoner by adoption, he bestowed upon the capital a more than filial regard. Besant is the nineteenth century Stow, and something more.... This remarkable volume.... It is a monument of faithful and careful research.’—The Daily Telegraph.
‘Will be of the utmost value to every student of the life and history of London.’—The Standard.
‘Altogether this posthumous work of the historian of London is one of the most fascinating books which he ever wrote.’—The Municipal Journal.
‘It is a wonderfully complete history.... Will probably stand to all time as the brightest and most authoritative book on a period which is bound, by its very evils, to have a fascination for the student of customs and manners, and for the student of national development.’—The Liverpool Post.
‘The book is engrossing and its manner delightful.’—The Times.
‘A work of great value and interest; ... profoundly interesting.’—The Westminster Gazette.