London Labour and London Poor. MAYHEW (Henry).

London Labour and London Poor; The Condition and Earnings of Those That Will Work, Cannot Work and Will Not Work.

Illustrated with ninety-seven full page wood-engraved plates.

Four volumes. 8vo. [220 x 140 x 160 mm]. Uniformly bound in quarter green calf over green cloth boards, spine divided into six panels by gouges in blind, red goat-skin labels lettered in gilt in the second and fourth panels, plain endpapers.

London: Charles Griffin and Company. n.d. [c.1864]

Internally clean, overall in very good condition. Text in double-columns, additional plates not called for, one in volume II: 'the London Scavenger', and one in volume III: 'Street Porter with Knot', fifteen statistical maps present in volume IV.

Henry Mayhew (1812-1887) was an English journalist and renowned social researcher, he was a co-founder of the satirical Punch magazine in 1841 and published an extensive series of articles in the Morning Chronicle that was later compiled into London Labour and the London Poor. Originally published as three volumes in 1851, a fourth volume was added in 1861. The first three volumes focuses of the various trades of the 'street folk' of London, from 'the rat catchers of the sewers', to the 'street Ethiopian serenaders', whilst volume IV shifts the attention to London's prostitutes, thieves, beggars and swindlers. Mayhew provides a valuable and extensive insight into working-class life in Victorian London.

Stock no. ebc8984