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| Harding Howell & Co interior |
I was excited in recent weeks to discover at Internet Archive a fine online collection of the beautiful early 19th C magazine, Ackermann’s Repository, courtesy the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Though the magazines online at Google Books have been cleaned up, the fairly complete (so far as I could determine) collection of color plates and the generally good condition of the pages at Internet Archive compensates, I think, for the yellowing.
I was particularly interested in checking out the very first volume of a high quality magazine that lasted about twenty years.
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| Store description |
From that first volume, I present what seems to have been been London’s first department store, called Harding, Howell & Co. in 1809. The text indicates that the firm was founded by “Messrs. Dyde and Scribe” twenty-five years previously. Naturally, I had to look them up—and wandered into a shoplifting case, here at The Proceedings of the Old Bailey.
—The Repository of arts, literature, commerce, manufactures, fashions and politics, Vol. 1, 1809
Clicking on a picture will enlarge it. Clicking on the caption will take you to the online page.
