MANUSCRIPT. – J. WILKINSON. My First Trip to London, and Neighbourhood. [N.p.:] London: 7th- 15th July 1862. 47pp., manuscript, 8vo (181 x 115mm.) 24 leaves of clearly legible hand-written diary entries relating the experiences of a young woman and her sister visiting London by train from Liverpool, and her thoughts on seeing the ‘Great Exhibition’ in Crystal Palace and the ‘Great London Exposition’ of 1862, plus a trip to Brighton. (Toning.) Original card wrappers, title in manuscript to upper cover (some corner creasing, browning). Note: an evocative travel journal that lends a different perspective on the ‘Great Exhibition’. On seeing statues of the engineers that were three or four times life size the writer wonders if this is to emphasise the ‘great minds’ of these ‘great men’. They see the trees, the sugar cane, the endless ‘Picture Galleries’, the ‘figures of all the nations’ (‘from the Indian savage down to the civilised European’), and the model of the hugely symbolic ‘Koh-i-noor’ diamond, but it’s the sheer vastness of the industrial technology that renders her speechless. The following day, ‘the thought struck me that there is as much care taken, if not more, in making anything for the destruction of life and property, than for the preservation of the same’.