Assembled from a series of newspaper articles first published in the newspaper *Morning Chronicle* throughout the 1840s, this exhaustively researched, richly detailed survey of the teeming street denizens of London is a work both of groundbreaking sociology and salacious voyeurism. In an 1850 review of the survey, just prior to its initial book publication, William Makepeace Thackeray called it "tale of terror and wonder" offering "a picture of human life so wonderful, so awful, so piteous and pathetic, so exciting and terrible, that readers of romances own they never read anything like to it." Delving into the world of the London "street-folk"-the buyers and sellers of goods, performers, artisans, laborers and others-this extraordinary work inspired the socially conscious fiction of Charles Dickens in the 19th century as well as the urban fantasy of Neil Gaiman in the late 20th. Volume I explores the lives of: the "wandering tribes" costermongers sellers of fish, fruits and vegetables sellers of books and stationery sellers of manufactured goods women and children on the streets and more. English journalist HENRY MAYHEW (1812-1887) was a founder and editor of the satirical magazine *Punch.*

Growing Up Poor explores childhood in late 19th and early 20th century London from a distinctive perspective. Anna Davin has skilfully woven together oral history, school records and other sources to reconstruct daily life among the labouring poor.

This book surveys the lives and experiences of hundreds of thousands of eighteenth-century non-elite Londoners in the evolution of the modern world.

'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. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The recent discovery that as a young man Charles Dickens lived only a few doors from a major London workhouse made headlines worldwide, and the campaign to save the workhouse from demolition caught the public imagination. Internationally, the media immediately grasped the idea that Oliver Twist's workhouse had been found, and made public the news that both the workhouse and Dickens's old home were still standing, near London's Telecom Tower. This book, by the historian who did the sleuthing behind these exciting new findings, presents the story for the first time, and shows that the two periods Dickens lived in that part of London - before and after his father's imprisonment in a debtors' prison - were profoundly important to his subsequent writing career.

Ragged London describes life in the rookeries of London, where forty people would live together in one room. Although life was a constant struggle against famine, disease and violence, the people enjoyed a closeness that was moer than the result of overcrowding. Their lives were lived entirely within the 'mean streets' of their little corner of London. They were born and raised within the rookeries, earned their meagre living there, enjoyed life as best they could, dressed in the latest fashion, got married, had children, died and were buried there. The lack of cooking facilities led to them inventing the takeaway, and there was absolutely no sanitation. In the poorest district of all, St Giles, only a single water pump serviced the entire population. It was a closed world, although the population explosion of nineteenth-century London led to millions of new arrivals in the already-congested rookery districts. The areas were lawless to a degree that dwarfs contemporary concerns about crime. Though life as cheap in the rookeries, they produced some of the best soldiers and sailors in the British armed forces.

This lavishly illustrated volume, featuring 170 images, offers a comprehensive and original survey of a fascinating collection of images of the lower orders of London. The London Cries is a body of graphic art produced between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries that provided continually changing representations of the tradesmen and street hawkers that roamed London from its beginnings right up to the present. Analyzing prints, drawings, lithographs, and paintings done during this time period, Sean Shesgreen traces portraits of ordinary men and women who made their living on the streets of this bustling city; characters include milkmaids, cheapjacks, beggars, prostitutes, Merry Andrews, religious fanatics, and other colorful figures of their stripe. Images of the Outcast examines the Cries in relationship to the historical actualities of street trading, bourgeois attitudes toward the poor, and other forms of art. Through a lively discussion of the prints, drawings, sketches and oils of artists, from the anonymous craftsmen of the sixteenth century to Theodore Gericault and others, Shesgreen provides an important overview of this significant genre. Many of the riveting images the author discusses have never been published or analyzed before.