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Loading... Victorian London: The Tale of a City 1840--1870by Liza Picard
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Victorian London is a book I would recommend to anyone with an interest in 19th century England - maybe even as an Xmas present for some history-loving friend or relation. Liza Picard has written a number of books about London and she really displays a genuine love of her subject. Victorian London is much more readable and enjoyable than any history book has a right to be. Divided under chapter headings that include Smells, Food, Clothes and So On (including a discussion of facial hair, tight lacing and 'drawers') how could it fail to be? Unlike many history writers, Picard writes about real people and their very real lives. Definitely one of the best books on the subject that I have read in a long time. ( )See my review: http://jzsbooks.blogspot.com/2008/07/... A really good 'dip into' type book. Interesting stories and facts. Definitely worth the read. 0.029 seconds to build listing no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0312325673, Hardcover)To Londoners, the years 1840 to 1870 were years of dramatic change and achievement. As suburbs expanded and roads multiplied, London was ripped apart to build railway lines and stations and life-saving sewers. The Thames was contained by embankments, and traffic congestion was eased by the first underground railway in the world. A start was made on providing housing for the "deserving poor." There were significant advances in medicine, and the Ragged Schools are perhaps the least known of Victorian achievements, in those last decades before universal state education. In 1851 the Great Exhibition managed to astonish almost everyone, attracting exhibitors and visitors from all over the world. But there was also appalling poverty and exploitation, exposed by Henry Mayhew and others. For the laboring classes, pay was pitifully low, the hours long, and job security nonexistent. Liza Picard shows us the physical reality of daily life. She takes us into schools and prisons, churches and cemeteries. Many practical innovations of the time—flushing lavatories, underground railways, umbrellas, letter boxes, driving on the left—point the way forward. But this was also, at least until the 1850s, a city of cholera outbreaks, transportation to Australia, public executions, and the workhouse, where children could be sold by their parents for as little as £12 and streetpeddlers sold sparrows for a penny, tied by the leg for children to play with. Cruelty and hypocrisy flourished alongside invention, industry, and philanthropy. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:12 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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