![]() The truth is that it’s a book about London as a living, growing organism in its own right and quibbling over a few years hardly makes any real difference.Įarly on in the book, one of the most startling things to try and get your head around is just how big London became and just how quickly that happened. The Dickens connection means that she takes a few liberties with dates – Dickens was working before the ‘Victorian’ age really came to fruition and was dead thirty years before it ended but I was happy to allow her some licence in this. Using the works of Dickens as her inspiration and guide also gives the book an interesting anchor – she can always plunder the Dickens oeuvre to provide her with some graphic portraits – and that author’s feel for the life of the common people pervades the pages. This is social history at the street level and all the better for its lack of focus on the gentry and aristocracy which always seems to end up dominating books like this. Judith Flanders’ The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London stands out for me because it’s a big (400+ pages), rumbustious, noisy and vivid account that can be read best in slices. There seems to have been quite a lot written in recent years about London as a city and Victorian London in particular. Posted on The Victorian City: Everyday Life In Dickens’ London by Judith Flanders ![]()
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