Giles Waterfield begins the book The people's galleries: art museums and exhibitions in Britain, 1800–1914 with an introduction that makes clear the author's intent to address the founding and development of public galleries ‘outside London’ in the Victorian era. The author also makes clear that the book is not intended as an all-inclusive museum history of Britain; rather, it is a look at galleries in Britain as ‘a bold experiment’ in education in a time of changing social attitudes. That the emphasis is placed on regional institutions is a welcome departure from studies that might tend to consider London first. In Waterfield's book, we readers get to explore the galleries of Glasgow and Manchester, for example, as case studies in civic growth. Additionally, we take a look at individual curators and donors, and their efforts to establish didactic experiences, navigate regional politics, and appeal to the interests of the public in art gallery settings.

‘Part One: Britain and the Visual Arts’ describes the climate into which British public art museums were born. For context, Waterfield brings our attention to such cases as German princely collections, which in the mid 1800s were converted to public establishments, seemingly without much trouble. By contrast, we learn that in Britain collections had a more tenuous growth due to wavering state control and less firm lodging situations for art collections. The author looks at the title of ‘curator’ and how its position in the art collections of the time was neither as prestigious nor as academic as in the field of science museums. We learn of the influence of the Parliamentary Select Committees of the 1820s and their efforts to reform the spotty performance of galleries into respectable and educational entities for public consumption. Specifically, the towns of Nottingham, Liverpool, and Keswick are mentioned as successful instances in the promotion of collections that could reflect towns’ cultured statuses.

In ‘Part Two: Creating the Art Museum in Victorian Britain’, Waterfield weaves a compelling narrative with his description of the struggles that curators faced in finding state support for their collections. He helps the reader feel urgency for events that occurred over a century ago, by drawing parallels between the socio-political challenges faced by Victorian curators and those felt by today's curators in securing funds and support for their initiatives. By moving further into the 19th century, we encounter a connection between the urbanization of towns during the Industrial Revolution and the interest in engendering a widespread appreciation for the arts. The author draws on primary source documents, journals and reviews in particular, to illustrate the bleakness of city living in areas such as Glasgow and Manchester. Contemporary documents also recount towns’ efforts to provide cultural education and recreation for residents in the form of galleries, to offset urban stresses and to impress upon visitors that towns did indeed have certain levels of sophistication. The extensive incorporation of primary documents continues with gallery guides and photographs of installations, to study the phenomenon of the universal exhibition. We see a similar effort to contextualize the author's architectural analysis of museum and gallery buildings. This second part of the book, which is the bulk of the content, is rich in illustrations and historical narrative.

The ominously but aptly named ‘Part Three: The Aftermath’ is brief relative to the first sections of the book, but it covers a weighty topic. Its brevity is due to its handling of galleries’ fates beyond the book's timeline end date of 1914. The aftermath in question is that of World War I, and how that bloody event affected individual art institutions and sociocultural resources in Britain. While the book as a whole is most concerned with how museums grew in the 19th century, the short last chapter about the aftermath of the war clarifies why some of the regional Victorian galleries that grew to be popular in Part Two did not travel well into the 20th century. Redirecting of resources and wartime strife led to the ruin of edifices and collectors, who otherwise could have continued to grow certain collections. The inclusion of this section is important, as it underscores one of the points in the book – that certain 19th century galleries that were vibrant in their time are not visible today in the landscape of British museums because they did not survive the war.

The end matter of The people's galleries is notably robust in information to help the reader navigate the book's content. The appendix is a much-needed, 300-year timeline of ‘Dates of the Foundation of Art Museums in Britain, 1684–1939’ where university and municipal galleries are represented alongside the more familiar national museums. The Notes and Bibliography sections are, expectedly, helpful and the bibliography provides an accessible way to digest the voluminous amount of gallery guides and catalogues that were consulted for this project. A remarkable component of the end matter is the index, which is a 21-page analysis of the book's contents with an eye toward highlighting precise points of interest in the narrative. The author gives us much more than an alphabetized list of gallery names, towns, and individuals. In addition to those important items, we can also easily find ‘art education and training – benefits of art education for general public’ and ‘state and visual arts – justification for public funding of museums.’ The index's depth is reflective of the book's content as a whole; it is the product of intensive tracking of primary source materials and images, a fresh perspective on museum pedagogy in the 19th century, and an interest in presenting diverse public arts efforts across Victorian Britain.