The motivations behind Dickens' novels and the poverty-stricken world of 19th century London.

Biography of the English author who rose from extreme poverty to become one of the most popular writers of all time.

From the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed author of The Invention of Murder, an extraordinary, revelatory portrait of everyday life on the streets of Dickens' London. The nineteenth century was a time of unprecedented change, and nowhere was this more apparent than London. 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. Technology—railways, street-lighting, and sewers—transformed both the city and the experience of city-living, as London expanded in every direction. 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.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, 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 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. No one who reads Judith Flanders's meticulously researched, captivatingly written The Victorian City will ever view London in the same light again.

No novelist is as intimately connected to a great city as Dickens is to London. The vibrancy of the city determined the shape and character of Dickens's work and he re-created London in his fiction. This book follows in his footsteps through the streets of the city, exploring the nature and architecture of Victorian London.

Archival photographs illustrate this guide to Victorian London seen through the eyes of Charles Dickens. Setting Dickens against the city that was the backdrop and inspiration for his work, it takes the reader on a memorable and haunting journey, discovering the places and subjects which stimulated his imagination. It includes photographs of famous landmarks such as the Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar Square and Westminster Abbey, alongside coaching inns, the Thames before the Embankment was built, the construction of the Metropolitan Underground Line, the docklands that studded the river and the many villages that make up London today.

The recent discovery that as a young man Charles Dickens lived only a few doors from a major London workhouse made headlines worldwide, and the campaign to save the workhouse from demolition caught the public imagination. Internationally, the media immediately grasped the idea that Oliver Twist's workhouse had been found, and made public the news that both the workhouse and Dickens's old home were still standing, near London's Telecom Tower. This book, by the historian who did the sleuthing behind these exciting new findings, presents the story for the first time, and shows that the two periods Dickens lived in that part of London - before and after his father's imprisonment in a debtors' prison - were profoundly important to his subsequent writing career.

This exploration of the streets of Dickens's London opens up new perspectives on the city and the writer Taking Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project as an inspiration, Dickens's London offers an exciting and original project that opens a dialogue between phenomenology, philosophy and the Dickensian representation of the city in all its forms. Julian Wolfreys suggests that in their representations of London - its streets, buildings, public institutions, domestic residences, rooms and phenomena that constitute such space - Dickens's novels and journalism can be seen as forerunners of urban and material phenomenology. While also addressing those aspects of the urban that are developed from Dickens's interpretations of other literary forms, styles and genres, Dickens's London presents in twenty-six episodes (from Banking and Breakfast via the Insolvent Court, Melancholy and Poverty, to Todgers and Time, Voice and Waking) a radical reorientation to London in the nineteenth century, the development of Dickens as a writer, and the ways in which readers today receive and perceive both. Key Features Major reassessment of Dickens's writing on the city Dual focus on methodology and the historicity of Dickensian urban consciousness Philosophical reflections on urban tropologies through key passages from Dickens's texts recreate the experience of Victorian London Inventive structure offers the reader an experience of the disordered multiplicity of London Illustrated with 19 maps and photographs

Written by the acclaimed historical novelist Lee Jackson, this book recreates the sights and sounds of Dickens' London and provides a detailed itinerary for those keen to follow in the footsteps of 'The Inimitable Boz'. Each of the eight walks conjures up forgotten scenes of London life – stage-coaches racing through the Borough; herds of cattle driven through suburban streets to reach Smithfield market; the uproar of a hanging outside Newgate Gaol – together with directions to the most atmospheric and intriguing parts of the Victorian metropolis which have survived into the twenty-first century.