And above the whole would hang a dense cloud of smog that varied disturbingly in color from brown to green Londoners, with affectionate disgust, called the most polluted days "pea-soupers. The traffic-human, animal and industrial-on its granite and macadamized roads let out an unremitting roar its docks and great river were perpetually thronged with ships and steamers its overland railways and underground trains went rattling off in myriad directions. No other city in Europe rivaled it for size or enterprise. In the space of a century, London's population rose from one million to nearly seven million. Flanders is a beguiling guide, drawing on Dickens's writings to create an irresistible portrait of the English capital at a time of unprecedented expansion. Flanders rightly hails as "the greatest recorder the London streets has ever known"-chronicled in his novels and journalism was merely life as most people then lived it.
Judith Flanders's erudite and vivid look at 19th-century London is a reminder that what Charles Dickens-an unflinching observer of urban wretchedness, whom Ms. The Victorian City, by Judith Flanders THERE is a slight disjunction between the title and the subtitle of this book because Dickens died in 1870 but Victoria lived until 1901 and the book. No one who reads Judith Flanders's meticulously researched, captivatingly written The Victorian City will ever view London in the same light again.Today the word "Dickensian," when used to describe social conditions, denotes extreme squalor. From the colorful cries of street-sellers to the uncomfortable reality of travel by omnibus, to the many uses for the body parts of dead horses and the unimaginably grueling working days of hawker children, no detail is too small, or too strange. Now, with him, Judith Flanders leads us through the markets, transport systems, sewers, rivers, slums, alleys, cemeteries, gin palaces, chop-houses and entertainment emporia of Dickens' London, to reveal the Victorian capital in all its variety, vibrancy, and squalor. From the moment Charles Dickens, the century's best-loved English novelist and London's greatest observer, arrived in the city in 1822, he obsessively walked its streets, recording its pleasures, curiosities and cruelties. Now Judith Flanders, one of Britain's foremost social historians, explores the world portrayed so vividly in Dickens' novels, showing life on the streets of London in colorful, fascinating detail. Technology-railways, street-lighting, and sewers-transformed both the city and the experience of city-living, as London expanded in every direction. In only a few decades, the capital grew from a compact Regency town into a sprawling metropolis of 6.5 million inhabitants, the largest city the world had ever seen.
unprecedented change, and nowhere was this more apparent than London.
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