#000470
Wonders of the Past, vol. 2 (2-volume set)
J. A. Hammerton
The concluding volume of Sir John Alexander Hammerton's two-volume survey of the ancient world, "a world-wide survey of the marvellous works of man in ancient times." Where volume one anchors itself in Egypt and the Near East, volume two ranges more widely—deeper into Greece and Rome and outward toward Asia and the Americas—continuing the pagination straight on from its companion. Like its partner it marries essays by working archaeologists to lavish photogravure plates, maps, and color illustrations, the whole issued by The Amalgamated Press in the 1920s and reprinted for years. Taken as a pair, the volumes form a complete picture-encyclopedia of antiquity as the interwar public understood it: authoritative, beautifully produced, and unabashedly in love with the grandeur of vanished worlds.
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The editor
Sir John Alexander Hammerton (1871–1949) was one of the most prolific editors in British publishing, the mind behind a whole shelf of Amalgamated Press part-works—illustrated encyclopedias of history, geography, and the ancient world—aimed at a broad, self-improving readership. He specialized in commissioning real expertise and wrapping it in the best reproduction technology of the day.
The book
This second volume completes the set, its pages numbered continuously from the first. It carries the survey through the classical world and beyond, again letting large photographic plates do much of the persuading. A bound run of what began as a fortnightly partwork, it was meant to sit on the shelf as a permanent reference.
How it has aged
As with volume one, the archaeology is dated and the tone is that of confident 1920s Britain; specific claims should be checked against current scholarship. Yet the plates remain striking, and the pair together is a fine example of how the interwar public met the ancient world.
For more context
Best kept and read alongside volume one, since the two were conceived and paginated as a single work; later American reprints appeared under the same title.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- J. A. Hammerton
- Publisher
- The Amalgamated Press
- Place of publication
- London
- Year
- 1923
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- History
- Location
- Colorado