London Labour and the London Poor

De: Henry Mayhew

Narrado por: David Timson

London Labour and the London Poor is a rare and fascinating insight into the lives and struggles of the 19th-century poor. Written by journalist and reformer Henry Mayhew, a founder and editor of the satirical magazine Punch, it collects hundreds of testimonials from the lower strata of Victorian society. We encounter street entertainers, 'pure finders', cabinetmakers, gingerbread sellers, 'screeve-fakers', swindlers, and burglars. We hear accounts from toshers finding items in sewers, people attempting to train pigs to dance, and witness the sale of everything from gilt watches and chickweed to needles, dog collars, and eel soup. It is a remarkable work, said to have inspired the socially conscious fiction of Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, who described it as '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'.

Download the accompanying reference guide.Public Domain (P)2018 Naxos Audiobooks

For the love of Victorian England

A must listen for anybody who loves Sherlock Holmes. Mayhew adds a colorful backdrop to the worlds of Dickens, Shelly and Stoker. His observations are applicable today. A must read. The audible version adds a depth of flavor that can’t truly be expressed any other way.

Excellent, if Biased Resource, Assembled Out of Or

The audiobook was assembled out of order - Chapter 237 is the beginning of the book, the introduction. After that, you can listen to subsequent chapters or go back to Chapter 1.

In terms of content, regardless of order:
Henry Mayhew was racist, sexist, classist and anti-semitic. However, he was also a product of his time and his time and his social class and he does seem to have tried to counter some of these things in what he recorded. What's even more valuable - to a prospective writer and lovers of Victorian history - is his transcribed, literal interviews with people from all walks of life, his descriptions of their homes, their shops, their backstories - this makes the work an invaluable resource to writers looking for Victorian character backstories among the poor, as well as an authentic list of workers to populate your story with - i.e. if your character is taking a carriage through town, what kinds of people would they see on the street, what kinds of shops, which costermongers, what would they loo like, etc. If your character IS a costermonger, what kind of clothes would they wear, how would it vary by trade, and their success or failure on the street.

It is highly repetitive, which is why I gave it 4 stars. That makes sense, given the nature of the work - it was released in a serialized fashion. But it does make the listener roll their eyes periodically and increase the speed.

I listened to the Naxos Publishing edition, which is, of course, an abridgment. They explained their selection criteria and I think it's sound. If you need to see things they left out, you'd have to loo to the original.

Overall, if you want to write about the Victorian era, especially the 1850's and 1860's, and need character and descriptive ideas, this is your book. Likewise, if you just love Victorian History, this is also worth reading.

THE BEST BOOK ON VICTORIAN LONDON

I’ve bought them all and this is by far and away the best. The interviews with actual Victorians are beautifully narrated and it takes you back in time.

Most other books get bogged down with data. This actually has life and feeling. Just wonderful.