A special gallery of 19th century book illustrations

Anybody wanting to know what a particular location they are interested in looks like today has only to turn to Google Earth and Street View (with the notable exception of Guernsey, which banned the Google camera cars) for an up-to-date view of the scene. Such access to views of the world would have been unimaginable a decade ago, never mind in the first half of the 19th century, before a single photograph had been taken out-of-doors in Jersey. Before the advent of photography the only pictures of Jersey (and elsewhere) were those drawn and painted by artists. Some of these images made their way into guidebooks and other publications, and thanks to another of the marvels of modern-day technology, they can be viewed online. Our bibliography has an extensive selection of books about Jersey which can be seen in one or more of the online libraries. Most of these contain superb artists' impressions of our island two centuries or more in the past. Some have been available in Jerripedia for some time, but on this page we have drawn together a gallery of 20 images of the town and harbour of St Helier dating from the 18th century onwards