Victorian London: The Tale of a City 1840--1870 1st Edition

by Liza Picard (Author)

32 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0312325671

ISBN-10: 0312325673

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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.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Picard (Elizabeth's London) opens this entertaining study of London's modern transformation with the exemplary tale of engineering genius Joseph Bazalgette's new sewer complex, which relieved the city's stink from overflowing cesspits. She goes on to show how the rise of railways transformed Victorian urban planning, spurring the growth of commuter suburbs. Touching on philanthropic initiatives in public housing, Picard also describes the architectural quirks of the typical Victorian middle-class terraced house and the everyday workings of the city's police, fire, water, gas and refuse services. Picard uses the material details of working, middle and upper classes to tell the story of Victorian class difference, dwelling on the hardships of the domestic servant and the intricacies of some of London's more successful trades, from tanning to piano manufacture to sugar refining. She also provides a fascinating history of London hospitals and medical schools. Although Picard depends heavily on the writings of Jane Carlyle (wife of Thomas Carlyle) and the chronicler of Victorian poverty Thomas Mayhew, Picard's use of servant diaries, the journals of visiting French tourists and contemporary advice manuals is effective and often humorous. Arch and conversational in tone, Picard's history is an informative treat. 32 pages of color photos. (Apr. 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The author freezes a three-decade time frame to capture the essence--literally, the sights, sounds, and odors--of the British capital at the height of the Victorian era. Picard's systematic examination offers both detail and insight into conditions of life, from all walks of life, as she presents an account at once greatly factual and highly atmospheric. The format is logical and the material easy to follow, with chapters ranging in topic from "Smells" (to really appreciate London back then, the author instructs the reader to "think of the worst smell you have ever met"), "The Streets," "Destitution and Poverty," "Upper Classes and Royalty," "Health," "Education," and "Religion." Not for casual browsers but for serious and well-versed readers seeking to stoke their interest in learning more about the city that, at the time, was the world's capital. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product details

Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (March 7, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312325673
ISBN-13: 978-0312325671
Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.5 x 9.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
Average Customer Review: 32 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,631,451 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4268 in Books > History > Europe > Great Britain > England
- #8199 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > History > Europe

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E. L. Roushanzamir

Detailed, chatty, charming, coy

November 9, 2013

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This book is detailed, chatty and charming, if coy. It's a bit like reading a good gossip. Popular histories vary greatly in their reliability, documentation and writing style and this is better than many. A reader doesn't expect or want a scholarly tome. But it's frustrating too. Best example, in a section titled "how to be a lady" the author provides an end note to what she calls an amalgam of sources of good advice: "for once I have not studded this account with notes." How unfortunate, since I had turned immediately to the end note to follow up on the amalgam she tantalized me with. I had reached this point in the book having decided to ignore a gratuitous remark a few pages earlier that Karl Marx never applied himself to "the normal expedient of working for a living." However, Marx' prodigious and influential output (whatever one's opinion about it) far exceeds Picard's, admirable & entertaining as many will find it. I have started and stopped reading frequently, but I do plan to finish the book. Bottom line, Amazon's 3-star "OK" rating sums up perfectly my response to a book about a topic that I'm interested in and highly motivated to pursue.

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Amazon Customer

Good for what it is.

October 19, 2007

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This book is nice for what it is--a survey of Victorians and their city by a nonexpert who nevertheless did very thorough research. If you are not very familiar with the Victorian age, I recommend this book strongly.

Because of the title, I was hoping for an in-depth analysis of LONDON, above all. I wanted descriptions of neighborhoods, of shopping districts, photographs of streetfronts, details of every district, its flavor, and the changes it underwent. The book is nearly useless in that regard.

If you not are wanting compact information about the historical London but rather rather a general book about Victorian attitudes, amusements, and pasttimes with a little dash of infrastructural information, this is a great read. It is a shame that the book's title and blurb do not reflect the content.

Quick note: The author was thrown off my pictures of servant girls in fancy dresses. Early photography studios kept a stock of nice clothes on hand, and so what a lower-middle to low class person is wearing in a photography studio picture shouldn't be thought to be representative of what they actually owned.

11 people found this helpful12 people found this helpful

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Ronald H. Clark

Another Delightful View of London History

April 3, 2006

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This is the fourth book the author has written on the history of London. The others dealt with Elizabethan, Restoration, and Dr. Johnson's London. Much as its predecessors, this volume on early Victorian London is a treasure and a delight to read. While the author focuses upon some of the physical aspects of the city (i.e., rivers, streets, buildings), the book really is much more concerned with the daily life of the city during the (1840-1870) period, and that is its great strength. Therefore, there are chapters for example on poverty, the class system, domestic service (a hard way to go), houses and gardens, food, clothing (surprisingly interesting), health, the Crystal Palace exhibition, education, religion and death. The author's research is extensive and she really knows the city. Her discussion is very informal and breezy to read--almost as if one were sitting across from her at tea time. The abundant illustrations add greatly to the narrative. This is apparently the finale of her series--this is too bad, for volumes on the late Victorian and Edwardian periods would have been of great value as well.

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A Florida Reader

A Simply Marvelous Book!

March 1, 2011

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I love this book. Just to let you know that up front.

This is a marvelous history of London, the city and the people, from 1840 to 1870. Picard writes in a familiar, casual style what is was like to be in the city during those years. You can get a sense of the style of the book by just listing the first few chapter titles: "Smells", "The River", "The Streets", "The Railways", "Buildings", "Practicalities", etc. Picard relates fascinating details with superb storytelling skills. The book reads as if some well educated close friend was telling you about the city with evident knowledge, but with a distinct desire not to bore or become too tied down in trivia.

I very much recommend this book to those who wish to learn more about England and her people, but also to anyone who has a desire to read a very well written non-fiction book.

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The Smells, sounds, society and daily life of Victorian London explained in readable prose

July 15, 2006

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Liza Pickard is a barrister with a mighty pen. She has authored several books about London. These Include: Life in

Elizabethan London: Restoration London; Dr. Johnson's London

and now this fourth book in the series.

Picard has done her homework: her reading of first person diaries and sources; periodical articles from the age. She includes

excellent secondary sources giving the reader an accurate view of

life when Victoria reigned the British Empire. The little Queen

ruled for 64 years from 1837 to her death in 1901.

Picard's chapters deal with such topics as:

daily life for the poor, middle class and wealthy;

the smells and the sights of London;

male and female fashions;

church life and the judicial system of Victorian England;

Amusements from opera strolling in the park to riding a horse

on Rotten Row.

Household appliances and the chores of childrearing;

Disease and Death traditions. Medicine made progress.

the growth of the railroads and road construction;

the Great Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851;

Education expanding its opportunities through Ragged Schools

and church schools.

There are many other topics but you get the idea. The book is

not thrilling but it is essential to a student of English history or literature who wants to sample life for the average

Londoner living from 1840-1870.

16 people found this helpful17 people found this helpful

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