Book: London Labour and the London Poor in English

This groundbreaking investigation into the lives of London`s underclass was undertaken by Henry Mayhew in the 1850s. His interviews with street traders, beggars, and thieves results in a work as vivid as a Victorian novel. This new selection includes original illustrations and an illluminating introduction and notes.`I go about the street with water-creases crying, "Four bunches a penny, water-creases."` London Labour and the London Poor is an extraordinary work of investigative journalism, a work of literature, and a groundbreaking work of sociology. Mayhew conducted hundreds of interviews with London`s street traders, entertainers, thieves and beggars which revealed that the `two nations` of rich and poor in Victorian Britain were much closer than many people thought. By turns alarming, touching, and funny, the pages of London Labour and the London Poor exposed a previously hidden world to view. The first-hand accounts of costermongers and street-sellers, of sewer-scavenger and chimney-sweep, are intimate and detailed and provide an unprecedented insight into their day-to-day struggle for survival. Combined with Mayhew`s obsessive data gathering, these stories have an immediacy that owes much to his sympathetic understanding and highly effective literary style. This new selection offers a cross-section of the original volumes and their evocative illustrations, and includes an illuminating introduction to Henry Mayhew and the genesis and influence of his work.