Reading Victorian London : Henry Mayhew, 1812 - 1887, and London labour and the London poor, 1861-62

Reading Victorian London : Henry Mayhew, 1812 - 1887, and London labour and the London poor, 1861-62

work, poverty, London Labour and the London Poor, literature, street, homeless, urban society, Mayhew Henry

'London Labour and the London Poor' (1861-62) is one of England's most remarkable nineteenth-century urban documents. Henry Mayhew, journalist, playwright and novelist, poured the best of his life's work into 'London Labour', and the earlier 'Morning Chronicle' newspaper articles (1849-51) on which it was largely based. 'London Labour' encapsulates his mature thought and energy, and public attention, and at its most concentrated, it encapsulates a single intellectual pattern, the examination of Victorian London's labouring poor seen through the communication and cultural prism of vernacular languages. And yet 'London Labour' remains strangely unrecognized even though there is a substantial body of scholarship focused on Mayhew's work, which I have examined. The challenge is to establish once again the theoretical power of Mayhew's vision of a Victorian society focused on urban relationships in the city. 'Reading Victorian London: Henry Mayhew' (1812-1887) and 'London Labour and the London Poor' (1861-62) considers how Victorian London was shaped; London's spatial organization within the limitations imposed by these structural determinations; and the patterning of group and class formations within this spatial domain. The communication issues of language--the increasingly secondary roles of the vernacular, the rise of modern reading communities, and the destruction or censorship of certain genres--are also examined. The pivotal issues of folk culture, the labouring poor described as wandering tribes in the midst of Victorian civilization, are also examined as well as the significance of nineteenth-century travel literature for understanding these important issues.

Lastly, the literary issues surrounding 'London Labour' itself are also examined through the Menippean satire, which accounts for Mayhew's perplexing and sometimes violent juxtapositions of topics, genres, and attitudes. For Mayhew combined his philosophical and practical inquiries into the study of the street-folk's life, their entertainment, humour, and vernacular languages, Victorian socio-cultural history, adventure stories and travel literature, are combined in one literary genre, called the Menippean satire. I conclude that there is the need for a more adequate theory of modern cities such as Victorian London, its history and cultures, which could be widened if scholars and journalists seriously included Mayhew's 'London Labour and the London Poor' in their discussions.

Grout, Nancy Catherine

Simon Fraser University

1999

en

Thesis

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