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London Labour and the London Poor (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature) Paperback – March 4, 2008

by Henry Mayhew (Author), Rosemary O'Day (Editor), David Englander (Editor)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 259 ratings
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London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew. With an Introduction by Rosemary O'Day. London Labour and the London Poor is a masterpiece of personal inquiry and social observation. It is the classic account of life below the margins in the greatest Metropolis in the world and a compelling portrait of the habits, tastes, amusements, appearance, speech, humour, earnings and opinions of the labouring poor at the time of the Great Exhibition. In scope, depth and detail it remains unrivalled. Mayhew takes us into the abyss, into a world without fixed employment where skills are declining and insecurity mounting, a world of criminality, pauperism and vice, of unorthodox personal relations and fluid families, a world from which regularity is absent and prosperity has departed. Making sense of this environment required curiosity, imagination and a novelist s eye for detail, and Henry Mayhew possessed all three. No previous writer had succeeded in presenting the poor through their own stories and in their own words, and in this undertaking Mayhew rivals his contemporary Dickens. To pass from one to the other, writes one authority, is to cross sides of the same street.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    688 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Wordsworth Editions Ltd
  4. Publication date
    March 4, 2008
  5. Dimensions
    4.9 x 1.5 x 7.7 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1840226196
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1840226195
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Henry Mayhew (1812 1887) was a journalist, social investigator, novelist, and author his work distinguished by vivid reportage, unsentimental sympathy, humor, and an eye for detail. Victor Neuburg is a former senior lecturer at the School of Librarianship, University of North London. His publications include Popular Literature and A Guide to the Western Front.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Wordsworth Editions Ltd; First Edition (March 4, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 688 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1840226196
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1840226195
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.9 x 1.5 x 7.7 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 259 ratings

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Henry Mayhew

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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
259 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Gerald E. Peterson
5.0 out of 5 stars For researchers and the merely curious, Mayhew's study provides ...
Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2017
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For researchers and the merely curious, Mayhew's study provides a rare and detailed look into the lives of those on the margins of society in mid-Victorian London.
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Steven Stowitts Elliott
5.0 out of 5 stars Good value
Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2019
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More complete than many editions.
2 people found this helpful
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Opal Mind
4.0 out of 5 stars Slice of history served warm...
Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2011
An old work that holds up -- Mayhew's a nonfiction Dickens historian. This seminal work really offers a glimpse into the past and paints how hard the poor had it back then.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2016
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Long read, but informative and entertaining.
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maplesugar
5.0 out of 5 stars Mayhew's original
Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2016
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Exhaustive and scholarly work.
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Daniel Genis
5.0 out of 5 stars If you love old poverty....
Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2015
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Riis for London
One person found this helpful
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Manyblackbears
1.0 out of 5 stars BOOOORING!!!
Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2017
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I am very disappointed. It was terrible. I could not get through it at all.
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Miss Tea
5.0 out of 5 stars If only our politicians would read this book
Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2022
This important book lends perspective into true poverty, illustratrating both why some measures of social welfare are crucial for society, and why today's brand of socialism misses the mark entirely. The rich would work everyone else into the ground for a pittance if governments allowed them to do so. The solution is worker's rights and fair pay -- not hand outs for those staying home and doing nothing. Create more jobs. If subsidies must be paid, then pay them to companies who pay the most people the fairest wages. Stop the modern robber-barrons from hoarding the country's wealth. Fix it.
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Anne S
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 18, 2024
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Fantastic contemporary descriptions of ordinary and extraordinary lives in London, with reported interviews of people at the time. A well designed layout and good sized font make it easy and enjoyable to dip into and refer to. I use it for background when researching family history.
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Levecq axel
4.0 out of 5 stars Etude sociale détaillée
Reviewed in France on January 25, 2021
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Une étude sociale détaillée de Londres, une étude d'époque très bien construite; quand il y a des "problèmes" à ses statistiques ou données ,il en explique le pourquoi et le comment et il en donne la marge d'erreur probable (c'est rare de voir çà..)
Je lui reproche une vue justement trop au "microscope" et pas une vue plus "générale".
Le livre est néanmoins extraordinaire .
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Spidergoose
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on October 12, 2016
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Good
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Charlie Midnight
5.0 out of 5 stars Mayhew one of the best
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 12, 2014
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Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor was a 'trail blazer' for its time. Mayhew opened up to the middleclasses the true meaning of the word poverty. His research is finely detailed, and if like myself, you are a fan of 'victorian england' it is worh purchasing. This is the London away from the mansions, fancy carriages, and the salons of high middleclass and upper societry.
As Thompson and Yeo put it in their own work, Mayhew turned poverty 'on its head'. He showed that the majority of the poor were not idle, listless, or beggars, but just the bottom of society who were able only to scratch a living to get by.
Highly recommended. Enjoy!

Michael.
9 people found this helpful
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Jason Mills
4.0 out of 5 stars A window into a grimy past, vivid and compelling.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 1, 2011
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"London Labour and the London Poor" began life in a newspaper around 1850 and went through several editions, culminating in four volumes. Mayhew sought to survey at first-hand the lives of the impoverished, and analyse the causes of their poverty. Modern popular editions like this Wordsworth one are selections from the larger work. The editors in this case have sought not merely to provide a 'colourful' selection of Mayhew's interviews with the poor, but to represent the breadth of his writings and concerns. Thus, this edition is rearranged and chaptered thematically, whilst the knowledgeable introduction explores Mayhew's life and the context of and reactions to his work.

Nonetheless, the voices of the poor bubble to the surface incessantly throughout the book, their sober testimonials often shocking. There is a good deal on the subculture of costermongers, but we also hear from the Jews, the Irish, street entertainers, labourers, thieves, cabinet-makers, scavengers, "pure-finders", etc. The longest chapter here, and perhaps the most trenchantly polemical, presents Mayhew's exhaustive account of the methods by which unscrupulous employers exploit the workers, who, desperate to earn a crust, are forced to collude in cruelly inventive systems that can only depress their own wages. (One reads of the shamelessly profiteering system for hiring ballast-heavers with astonishment that such practices could be legal.) There are also chapters on criminality, domestic life, culture, etc.

Mayhew's determined efforts to support his case with statistics suffer from a paucity of good data and unsophisticated methodology at the time; but with both this and his copious direct experience he still succeeds in undermining the glib arguments of contemporary economists that the poor had essentially made their own beds, and that their capitalist employers should not be expected to help. Mayhew is against charity and for the working man (indeed, he divides the poor into "deserving" and "undeserving"...), but insists that wages must not be artificially depressed by exploitation. (In the closing section of this edition he draws economists' attention to the unmentioned 600 million "steam men" introduced into the labour market by industrialisation.)

Mayhew lets the poor speak for themselves - in itself a great service to social history - and earnestly draws his arguments out of his discoveries. His analytical writing is clear and cogent, while his reportage, as for instance in describing the street markets, is often vibrant and vivid, and would not disgrace the pages of Dickens.

This 600-page edition's appendices are a bibliography of Mayhew's works, the full table of contents of the larger work, and an expansive list of his sources and authorities - though oddly, no index. There are also 16 illustrations and 4 maps. Though I'm not able to compare other editions, this one seems to me a satisfying, informative, diverse and persuasive selection from one of the classics of social history.
30 people found this helpful
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