This book is intended as an easy-to-read history of the 1850s in Britain, covering the major happenings, such as the Great Exhibition in 1851, the expansion of the railways, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Crimean War, the urban migration, and the beginnings of the Bank of England as a central bank. The gimmick of the Looking Back at Britain series is that they're illustrated entirely with images from Getty's collection, and this book certainly demonstrates the breadth of material they have available.

As reference for artists and writers, however, it's just not great, precisely because of its breadth. The author of a book this broad in scope cannot possibly be an expert on everything it covers. A couple of popular myths about corsets and crinolines slipped in, which makes me doubt the veracity of the information on the topics I know less about. The images are many but have no focus, so every section left me feeling either like I wish there was more depth or at least more images because the subject was relevant to my interests, or like it'd wasted my time because it was not.

The images themselves are good, and many are large. Many are portraits of well-known people, but even if you have no interest in the individuals, they may still be of use as just photos of people taken during the 1850s. It's neat to flip through, but because there's little on any single subject, it's difficult to use this book as visual reference.

If you're going to be spending money on photo books of this period rather than just browsing Getty, Wikimedia Commons, and other sites, you might as well go for more specialised books than this one.