Those seeking information on what it was like to live in London during Coleridge-Tayor's lifetime should read the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, with their gas-lit streets, horse-drawn hansom cabs, street urchins, steam trains and telegrams. Ernest Shepard's Drawn from Memory (1957) are recollections of London in 1887 when he was eight years old and have delightful illustrations, in the style that he used in Winnie-the-Pooh, including an Italian organ grinder; a horse-drawn fire engine; a crossing sweeper whose brushing enabled shoes to remain unsullied by horse-droppings; and a bus with passengers in the open. Son of an architect, Shepard and his sister had violin lessons and attended recitals.

George and Weedon Grossmith's novel The Diary of a Nobody of 1892 has seldom been out of print. Charles Pooter, a City clerk who lives in north London is not involved in music and his son's romance with a musical hall singer is disliked. Set in south London a little later Henry Bashford's Augustus Carp, Esq. by Himself of 1924 describes another small-minded family. Their musical activities were playing hymns on a harmonium.

Louis Bamberger's Bow Bell Memories ramble but contain descriptions of London from the 1860s. He was to spend more than a half-century in the timber and piano trades.