London Stories: Personal Lives, Public Histories

The melodramatic and romantic clichés that pervade popular conceptions of working-class Londoners in the 19th and 20th century are debunked in this innovative exposé of proletariat London. The individual stories of muted historical figures, including an illiterate silk weaver, a grandmother in an asylum, a deserted family, an abused daughter, and a dead child, are brought to light through interpretations of the scraps they left behind—gravestone inscriptions, photographs and certificates, t...