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hawkwing_lbBooks 2012: 190
190. Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor. Abridged by Victor Neuburg. Penguin Classics, London, 1985.
Five hundred pages of extracts from Victorian writer Henry Mayhew's best-known work, his inquiry into the habits of the working and impoverished classes of London.
More writers should read this book when considering the social landscape of early modern cities - Victorian London is in many senses a modern city, but I think one can extrapolate much from the labouring life on view in this work. Mayhew allows his subjects to speak, often in their own words and frequently in their own dialect, and only occasionally moralises from his editorial position.
Except when it comes to the case of prostitution, which he classes with begging as not actually work.* The old, awful distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor on grounds of moral judgement remains in play on this front, despite Mayhew's surprisingly sympathetic eye for the labouring classes in other cases.
A useful and interesting book, well worth reading.
*Let me affirm and avow my utter disagreement.
190. Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor. Abridged by Victor Neuburg. Penguin Classics, London, 1985.
Five hundred pages of extracts from Victorian writer Henry Mayhew's best-known work, his inquiry into the habits of the working and impoverished classes of London.
More writers should read this book when considering the social landscape of early modern cities - Victorian London is in many senses a modern city, but I think one can extrapolate much from the labouring life on view in this work. Mayhew allows his subjects to speak, often in their own words and frequently in their own dialect, and only occasionally moralises from his editorial position.
Except when it comes to the case of prostitution, which he classes with begging as not actually work.* The old, awful distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor on grounds of moral judgement remains in play on this front, despite Mayhew's surprisingly sympathetic eye for the labouring classes in other cases.
A useful and interesting book, well worth reading.
*Let me affirm and avow my utter disagreement.
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Date: 2012-10-12 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-12 08:21 pm (UTC)