The East End is an iconic area of London, from the transient street art of Banksy and Pablo Delgado to the exhibitions of Doreen Fletcher and Gilbert and George. Located east of the Tower of London and north of the River Thames, it has experienced a number of developmental stages in its four-hundred-year history. Originating as a series of scattered villages, the area has been home to Europe's worst slums and served as an affluent nodal point of the British Empire. Through its evolution, the East End has been the birthplace of radical political and social movements and the social center for a variety of diasporic communities. This reference work, with its alphabetically organized cross-referenced entries and its original and historical photography, serves as a comprehensive guide to the social and cultural history of this global hub.

The East End is an iconic area of London, from the transient street art of Banksy and Pablo Delgado to the exhibitions of Doreen Fletcher and Gilbert and George. Located east of the Tower of London and north of the River Thames, it has experienced a number of developmental stages in its four-hundred-year history. Originating as a series of scattered villages, the area has been home to Europe's worst slums and served as an affluent nodal point of the British Empire. Through its evolution, the East End has been the birthplace of radical political and social movements and the social center for a variety of diasporic communities. This reference work, with its alphabetically organized cross-referenced entries and its original and historical photography, serves as a comprehensive guide to the social and cultural history of this global hub.

The East End as an idea is known to every Londoner, and to many others, though its boundaries are vague. Alan Palmer's historical overview of the area (first published in 1989 and revised in 2000) takes its extent to be the traditional limits of Hackney and Tower Hamlets, Hoxton and Shoreditch, the docklands and their overflow into West Ham and East Ham. And at the heart of the East End lies Spitalfields, home to a transient, often radical and hard-working population. Though it is often seen as London's centre of industry and poverty, in comparison to the well-to-do West End, the East End has always been a diverse place: in the seventeenth century, Hackney was a pleasant country retreat; Stepney and the docklands a bustling world of sailors and merchants. The book traces the development of the area from these roots, through the nineteenth century - when the East End became notorious as the home of radicals, exiled revolutionaries and the very poor, its crowded streets the scene of murder, riot and cholera -to the bombing of the first and second world war; and the subsequent decline and regeneration of the twentieth century.

The East End is one of the most famous parts of London and it has had its own distinctive identity since the district was first settled in medieval times. It is best known for extremes of poverty and deprivation, for strong political and social movements, and for the extraordinary mix of immigrants who have shaped its history. Jonathan Oatess handbook is the ideal guide to its complex, rich and varied story and it is an essential source for anyone who wants to find out about an East End ancestor or carry out their own research into the area.He outlines in vivid detail the development of the neighbourhoods that constitute the East End. In a series of information-filled chapters, he explores East End industries and employment the docks, warehouses, factories, markets and shops. He looks at its historic poverty and describes how it gained a reputation for criminality, partly because of notorious criminals like Jack the Ripper and the Krays. This dark side to the history contrasts with the liveliness of the East End entertainments and the strong social bonds of the immigrants who made their home there Huguenots, Jews, Bangladeshis and many others.Throughout the book details are given of the records that researchers can consult in order to delve into the history for themselves online sites, archives, libraries, books and museums.

Bounded on either side by the river Lea and the City walls, London's East End has witnessed a wide variety of people and ways of life. Bountiful photos, drawings, maps, engravings, and an authoritative text weave a rich historical tapestry of the riversides where pirates once walked; the monasteries and slums east of the tower; and Shoreditch, where audiences cheered Shakespeare's plays. Over five centuries worth of anecdotes, folk tales, diary excerpts, court cases, newspapers, and letters capture this colorful neighborhood.

Paul Newland's illuminating study explores the ways in which London's East End has been constituted in a wide variety of texts - films, novels, poetry, television shows, newspapers and journals. Newland argues that an idea or image of the East End, which developed during the late nineteenth century, continues to function in the twenty-first century as an imaginative space in which continuing anxieties continue to be worked through concerning material progress and modernity, rationality and irrationality, ethnicity and 'Otherness', class and its related systems of behaviour.The Cultural Construction of London's East End offers detailed examinations of the ways in which the East End has been constructed in a range of texts including BBC Television's EastEnders, Monica Ali's Brick Lane, Walter Besant's All Sorts and Conditions of Men, Thomas Burke's Limehouse Nights, Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor, films such as Piccadilly, Sparrows Can't Sing, The Long Good Friday, From Hell, The Elephant Man, and Spider, and in the work of Iain Sinclair.

The modern history of London's East End has been well-documented – but what of its ancient roots? From embryonic beginnings in the Stone Age, through Roman rule and civil wars, all the way to its jam-packed twentieth-century timeline, the East End has always been a place of innovation, diversity and change. Written by an East Ender with a love of her roots, The Little History of the East End is an engaging look at the area's history through the people that made it, one that will enthral and surprise both residents and visitors alike.