Fascination with the lives of pedlars and hawkers first expressed itself in English art around 1600. Marcellus Laroon's Cryes of the City of London drawne after the Life was published in 1687 and became a best-seller the day it appeared, remaining popular for nearly a century and a half - eight editions followed the first until it finally went out of print after 1821. Laroon's volume of designs remains the most sophisticated and influential collection of street cries with its detailed chronicling of London working life. The present volume makes the Cryes available once again as a valuable document for the scholars of popular British art, social history and costume studies; more so because of the inclusion of plates from the 1760 edition in which designs were updated to provide us with a unique comparison of the changes in art and costume between 1687 and the late eighteenth century. The book also contains nineteen hitherto unpublished sketches by Laroon held at Blenheim Palace.

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.

'Cries', artistic representations of the various denizens of London's streets including prostitutes, beggars and tinkers, were produced between 1580 and 1900. This study analyses the representation behind the art of the 'Cries' in a social, cultural and historical context.

London in the eighteenth century was the greatest city in the world. It was a magnet that drew men and women from the rest of England in huge numbers. For a few the streets were paved with gold, but for the majority it was a harsh world with little guarantee of money or food. For the poor and destitute, London's streets offered little more than the barest living. Yet men, women and children found a great variety of ways to eke out their existence, sweeping roads, selling matches, singing ballads and performing all sorts of menial labor. Many of these activities, apart from the direct begging of the disabled, depended on an appeal to charity, but one often mixed with threats and promises. Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London provides a remarkable insight into the lives of Londoners, for all of whom the demands of charity and begging were part of their everyday world.

Walking the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London will entertain and inform all who are interested in literature, history, and the city of London. This unique book invites the reader to walk along the dirty, crowded, and fascinating streets of eighteenth-century London in an unusual way. Nine leading experts from the fields of literature, history, classics, gender, biography, geography, and costume, offer different interpretations of John Gay's poem Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716). The poem - a lively, funny, and thought-provoking statement about urban life - accompanies the essays, in a new edition with comprehensive notes. The introduction paints a vibrant picture of London in 1716, depicting Gay's fascinating life and literary world, offering an invaluable guide to the poem. Together, these elements allow the heat, grime, and smells of the underbelly of eighteenth-century London come alive in new ways.