Victorian London: The Life of a City 1840-1870 - Hardcover

Picard, Liza

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297847333 ISBN 13: 9780297847335

Publisher: Orion, 2005

Synopsis

Like her previous books, this book is the product of the author's passionate interest in the realities of everyday life - and the conditions in which most people lived - so often left out of history books. This period of mid Victorian London covers a huge span: Victoria's wedding and the place of the royals in popular esteem; how the very poor lived, the underworld, prostitution, crime, prisons and transportation; the public utilities - Bazalgette on sewers and road design, Chadwick on pollution and sanitation; private charities - Peabody, Burdett Coutts - and workhouses; new terraced housing and transport, trains, omnibuses and the Underground; furniture and decor; families and the position of women; the prosperous middle classes and their new shops, e.g. Peter Jones, Harrods; entertaining and servants, food and drink; unlimited liability and bankruptcy; the rich, the marriage market, taxes and anti-semitism; the Empire, recruitment and press-gangs. The period begins with the closing of the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons and ends with the first (steam-operated) Underground trains and the first Gilbert & Sullivan. All the splendours and horrors of Victorian life will be vividly recalled.

About this title

Review:

Reading her book is like gazing at one of those energetic, crowded canvanses by the Victorian painter William Powell Frith. (AN Wilson THE EVENING STANDARD)

She is an engaging companion, always wondering out loud about the sort of questions which you've asked yourself........an enjoyable book. (Philip Hensher THE SPECTATOR)

Picard enjoys recounting the gruesome daily mechanics of living in what Cobbett described as 'the great wen' (Tristrum Hunt NEW STATESMAN)

'Picard is particularly good on the sort of thing that contemporary chronicles didn't always think to put in..... a very welcome addition to the skyline (Adam Newey THE GUARDIAN)

This book is a feast of tit-bits, bringing 19th-century London to life piecemeal with the accumulation of facts. (Jad Adams THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

Liza Picard shares Victorian Londoners' enthusiasm for their bits and bobs. (Kate Summerscale THE DAILY TELEGRAPH)

She writes the old history, descriptive and unanalytical, painted in exhilarating colours. Victorian London, finest example of the greatest urban age since the Renaissance, was made for her. (Simon Jenkins THE SUNDAY TIMES)

The book is a mine of information. (THE WEEK)

witty and entertaining. (IMAGE)

wonderfully entertaining. (Gillian Tindall LITERARY REVIEW)

Book Description:

From rag-gatherers to royalty, from fish knives to Freemasons: everyday life in Victorian London

About this edition

• Publisher: Orion
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0297847333
• ISBN 13: 9780297847335
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400