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London Labour and the London Poor

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title London Labour and the London Poor
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Henry Mayhew
Introduction by Rosemary O'Day
Series edited by Tom Griffith
SeriesWordsworth Classics of World Literature
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:688
Dimensions(mm): Height 198,Width 129
Category/GenreReportage and collected journalism
ISBN/Barcode 9781840226195
ClassificationsDewey:305.560942109034
Audience
General

Publishing Details

Publisher Wordsworth Editions Ltd
Imprint Wordsworth Editions Ltd
Publication Date 5 March 2008
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

With an Introduction by Rosemary O'Day. London Labour and the London Poor is a masterpiece of personal inquiry and social observation. It is the classic account of life below the margins in the greatest Metropolis in the world and a compelling portrait of the habits, tastes, amusements, appearance, speech, humour, earnings and opinions of the labouring poor at the time of the Great Exhibition. In scope, depth and detail it remains unrivalled. Mayhew takes us into the abyss, into a world without fixed employment where skills are declining and insecurity mounting, a world of criminality, pauperism and vice, of unorthodox personal relations and fluid families, a world from which regularity is absent and prosperity has departed. Making sense of this environment required curiosity, imagination and a novelist's eye for detail, and Henry Mayhew possessed all three. No previous writer had succeeded in presenting the poor through their own stories and in their own words, and in this undertaking Mayhew rivals his contemporary Dickens. 'To pass from one to the other', writes one authority,' is to cross sides of the same street'.