In the original dust cover. Green cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available

• Note: This book carries a £5.00 discount to those that subscribe to the F.B.A. mailing list

For conditions, please view our photographs. An original  book from the library gathered by the famous Cambridge Don, computer scientist, food and wine connoisseur, Jack Arnold LANG.

            This book was the property of Jack’s distinguished mother

London’s Underworld, by Henry Mayhew, is a classic sociological text, often an abridged selection from his larger work London Labour and the London Poor, focusing on Victorian London’s criminal and impoverished classes (pickpockets, vagrants) through first-person accounts, with the 1969 Hamlyn (Spring Books) edition being a popular reprint featuring editor Peter Quennell. This edition, available in hardcover, captures Mayhew’s groundbreaking oral history style, detailing the real lives of the urban poor in vivid, Dickensian-like narratives.

Key Details of the 1969 Hamlyn Edition:

• Author: Henry Mayhew.

• Content: Selections from “Those That Will Not Work,” the fourth volume of London Labour and the London Poor.

• Publisher: Hamlyn Publishing Group (specifically Spring Books imprint).

• Year: 1969.

• Language: English.

• Format: Often a hardcover, around 428 pages.

Significance:

• Pioneering Sociology: Mayhew’s work is considered the first major sociological study of poverty, using firsthand interviews to create an authentic picture of 19th-century urban life.

• Literary Value: The raw, honest testimonies from the streets offer a compelling, often harrowing, view of desperation, making it as captivating as fiction.

• Historical Resource: It remains a vital reference for historians, sociologists, and anyone studying Victorian London.

Selections from ‘ Those That Will Not Work’ the fourth volume of ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ by Henry Mayhew – first published 1862 – 427 pages with illustrations.

Henry Mayhew (25 November 1812 – 25 July 1887) was an English journalist, playwright, and advocate of reform. He was one of the co-founders of the satirical magazine Punch in 1841, and was the magazine’s joint editor, with Mark Lemon, in its early days. He is also known for his work as a social researcher, publishing an extensive series of newspaper articles in the Morning Chronicle that was later compiled into the three-volume book London Labour and the London Poor (1851), a groundbreaking and influential survey of the city’s poor.