Dirty Old London: The Victorian Fight Against Filth
Author(s): Lee Jackson
In Victorian London, filth was everywhere: horse traffic filled the streets with dung, household rubbish went uncollected, cesspools brimmed with "night soil," graveyards teemed with rotting corpses, the air itself was choked with smoke. In this intimately visceral book, Lee Jackson guides us through the underbelly of the Victorian metropolis, introducing us to the men and women who struggled to stem a rising tide of pollution and dirt, and the forces that opposed them.
Through thematic chapters, Jackson describes how Victorian reformers met with both triumph and disaster. Full of individual stories and overlooked details--from the dustmen who grew rich from recycling, to the peculiar history of the public toilet--this riveting book gives us a fresh insight into the minutiae of daily life and the wider challenges posed by the unprecedented growth of the Victorian capital.
Product Information
'This is a tightly argued, meticulously researched history of sanitation that reads like a novel.' - Paula Byrne, The Times -- Paula Bryne The Times "Lee Jackson stops to have a good poke around - and consider in fascinating, sometimes gruesome detail, the filth and nuisances of the time ... Utterly engrossing."-Jo Baker, The New York Times Book Review -- Jo Baker The New York Times Book Review
Lee Jackson is a well-known Victorianist and creator of a preeminent website on Victorian London (www.victorianlondon.org).
General Fields
- :
- : Yale University Press
- : Yale University Press
- : 0.362874
- : 02 October 2015
- : 197mm X 127mm
- : United States
- : books
Special Fields
- : Lee Jackson
- : Paperback
- : English
- : 304
- : 40 b/w illus.
