{"title":"Books by Henry Mayhew","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780199697571","title":"London Labour and the London Poor","description":"'I go about the street with water-creases crying, \"Four bunches a penny, water-creases.\"'London Labour and the London Poor is an extraordinary work of investigative journalism, a work of literature, and a groundbreaking work of sociology. Mayhew conducted hundreds of interviews with London's street traders, entertainers, thieves and beggars which revealed that the 'two nations' of rich and poor in Victorian Britain were much closer than many people thought. By turns alarming, touching, and funny, the pages of London Labour and the London Poor exposed a previously hidden world to view. The first-hand accounts of costermongers and street-sellers, of sewer-scavenger and chimney-sweep, are intimate and detailed and provide an unprecedented insight into their day-to-day struggle for survival. Combined with Mayhew's obsessive data gathering, these stories have an immediacy that owes much to his sympathetic understanding and highly effective literary style. This new selection offers a cross-section of the original volumes and their evocative illustrations, and includes an illuminating introduction to Henry Mayhew and the genesis and influence of his work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201519255730,"sku":"9780199697571","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780199697571_3e4d8b03-cd2a-4559-8b28-226e6cbca45b.jpg?v=1786012792"},{"product_id":"9780486440064","title":"The London Underworld in the Victorian Period: v. 1","description":"The first and possibly the greatest sociological study of poverty in 19th-century London. Mayhew and his collaborators explored hundreds of miles of London streets in the 1840s and 1850s, gathering thousands of pages of testimony from the city's humblest residents. A classic reference source for sociologists, historians, and criminologists.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56290649375093,"sku":"9780486440064","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780486440064_2ea760df-ad6d-4fab-8946-590888ca0a89.jpg?v=1786013517"},{"product_id":"london-labour-and-the-london-poor-1","title":"London Labour and the London Poor","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWith an Introduction by Rosemary O'Day.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eLondon Labour and the London Poor\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNo 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'.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57490057396597,"sku":"9781840226195","price":5.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781840226195.jpg?v=1786441951"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-henry-mayhew.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}