London Labour and the London Poor

by Henry Mayhew Narrated by David Timson

Overview

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'.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

Journalist Mayhew wrote these texts as newspaper articles between 1849 and 1850. He exposed the underbelly of London's impoverished masses, some working, some begging, others stealing. Dickens, it ain't.

—Michael Rogers

From the Publisher

"Henry Mayhew's "London Labour and the London Poor" takes the fascinated and appalled reader deep into the world of the Victorian underclass...It's a book you'll want to keep as well as reread."—The Washington Post

"A smartly presented abridgement...[H]ighly welcome."—Forward

FEBRUARY 2019 - AudioFile

Narrator David Timson takes three tacks in performing this classic of Victorian political economy and sociology. He delivers the modern editors’ notes and introduction with vigorous clarity. He reads Mayhew’s text with similar energy but with more feeling and with an orotund, occasionally jocular tone, as if Mayhew were a Dickens character. And for the heart of the book—the testimony of the poor, who are answering interview questions—he not only gives each person their own voice and accent, but he also uses tone and manner to exhibit their character and emotional state, giving, in effect, a multitude of dramatic monologues that are revealing, informative, and often greatly affecting. Overall it’s a performance—a series of performances—of impressive creativity, sensitivity, and skill, a remarkable tour de force. W.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169228458
Publisher:	Naxos Audiobooks
Publication date:	09/14/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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