London Labour and the London Poor

Selected Edition

Henry Mayhew, Barbara Leckie, Janice Schroeder

• Publisher: Broadview Press
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781460406779
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

Produced between 1850 and 1862, London Labour and the London Poor is one of the most significant examples of nineteenth-century oral history. The collection teems with the minute particulars of the everyday—bits and pieces of London lives assembled into a precarious whole by the author, editor, and principal investigator, Henry Mayhew. Mayhew was interested in the social fabric of people's lives, their labour and earnings, but also their families, education, leisure time, and religious beliefs. What gives his "case studies" such immediacy is that they seem to flow unprompted and uninterrupted from the mouths of his subjects: street sellers, dock labourers, musicians, rat catchers, vagrants, chimney sweeps, thieves, and prostitutes.

All are captured in this newly annotated and selected edition of Mayhew's four-volume work. Historical appendices include a contemporary map of London, reviews of London Labour, and other slum journalism from the period.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Henry Mayhew: A Brief Chronology
• A Note on the Text
• Money, Earnings, and the Cost of Living in London Labour and the London Poor
• London Labour and the London Poor
• Volume 1
• Volume 2
• Volume 3
• Appendix A: Full Table of Contents of London Labour and the London Poor
• Appendix B: Contemporary Reviews
• Appendix C: Selection of Entries from the Morning Chronicle and Volume 4 of London Labour and the London Poor
• Appendix D: Answers to Correspondents
• Appendix E: Mayhew’s Contemporaries and “Slum Journalism”
• Works Cited and Select Bibliography