London 1870 1914

This book conveys the excitement, diversity and richness of London at a time when the city was arguably at the height of its power, uniqueness and attraction. Balancing the social, the topographical and the visible aspects of the great city, author Andrew Saint uses buildings, architecture, literature and art as a way into understanding social and historical phenomena. While many volumes on Victorian London focus on poverty (an issue which is included in this book), the author here provides a broader picture of life in the city. It is enlivened with a rich line-up of colourful characters, including Baron Albert Grant; Henry Mayers Hyndman and his connections with Karl Marx, William Morris and George Bernard Shaw; John Burns; Octavia Hill; Aubrey Beardsley and the artistic bohemians; Alfred Harmsworth and the Garrett sisters, and includes insightful quotes on London by esteemed authors such as Trollope, Henry James and Rudyard Kipling. Topics covered include: the creation of new neighbourhoods and roads; how the Victorians dealt with their housing crisis; why certain architectural styles were preferred; and the fashion for focusing on certain types of building.

Growing Up Poor explores childhood in late 19th and early 20th century London from a distinctive perspective. Anna Davin has skilfully woven together oral history, school records and other sources to reconstruct daily life among the labouring poor.

A Lacanian reading of fantasy fiction 1887-1914 showing the return of atavistic horrors in the wake of the dissolution of traditional authorities. The book shows the critical power of fantasy read in conjunction with psychoanalysis in exploring profound socio-political questions.

This is the first comprehensive survey of the economic development of the world's first great industrial metropolis. Modern theories of urban economics are used to shed new light on the process of change in the city.

Drawing on moving personal accounts--letters, oral histories, and memoirs--as well as original documentary evidence found in parish records, histories, and demographic data, Hugh McLeod explores the role of religion in the everyday life of working-class communities. The book reveals how belief and unbelief are related to the experiences of poverty, social class and alienation, to the ways in which people celebrated rites of passage and survived personal crises, to relationships between men and women, and to political organizations. McLeod examines the link between secularisation and the growth of cities as centres of working-class life, and chronicles how new forms of religiosity arose alongside secular political movements and remained a force among the poor even as institutional attachments diminished. Another important contribution is the book's discussion of the gendering of religious experience.

"Judith Neiswander explains that during these years liberal values - individuality, cosmopolitanism, scientific rationalism, the progressive role of the elite and the emancipation of women - informed advice about the desirable appearance of the home. In the period preceding the First World War, these values changed dramatically: advice on decoration became more nationalistic in tone and a new goal was set for the interior - "to raise the British child by the British hearth." Neiswander traces this evolving discourse within the context of current writing on interior decoration, writing that it is much more detached from social and political issues of the day."--BOOK JACKET.

This book presents an innovative study on the history and impact of landed property, urban development and taxation between 1870-1914.

Baby booms have a long history. In 1870, colonial Melbourne was ’perspiring juvenile humanity’ with an astonishing 42 per cent of the city’s inhabitants aged 14 and under - a demographic anomaly resulting from the gold rushes of the 1850s. Within this context, Simon Sleight enters the heated debate concerning the future prospects of ’Young Australia’ and the place of the colonial child within the incipient Australian nation. Looking beyond those institutional sites so often assessed by historians of childhood, he ranges across the outdoor city to chart the relationship between a discourse about youth, youthful experience and the shaping of new urban spaces. Play, street work, consumerism, courtship, gang-related activities and public parades are examined using a plethora of historical sources to reveal a hitherto hidden layer of city life. Capturing the voices of young people as well as those of their parents, Sleight alerts us to the ways in which young people shaped the emergent metropolis by appropriating space and attempting to impress upon the city their own desires. Here a dynamic youth culture flourished well before the discovery of the ’teenager’ in the mid-twentieth century; here young people and the city grew up together.