A Great and Monstrous Thing

A Great and Monstrous Thing PDF Author: Jerry White
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674073173
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
London in the eighteenth century was a new city, risen from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1666 that had destroyed half its homes and great public buildings. The century that followed was an era of vigorous expansion and large-scale projects, of rapidly changing culture and commerce, as huge numbers of people arrived in the shining city, drawn by its immense wealth and power and its many diversions. Borrowing a phrase from Daniel Defoe, Jerry White calls London “this great and monstrous thing,” the grandeur of its new buildings and the glitter of its high life shadowed by poverty and squalor. A Great and Monstrous Thing offers a street-level view of the city: its public gardens and prisons, its banks and brothels, its workshops and warehouses—and its bustling, jostling crowds. White introduces us to shopkeepers and prostitutes, men and women of fashion and genius, street-robbers and thief-takers, as they play out the astonishing drama of life in eighteenth-century London. What emerges is a picture of a society fractured by geography, politics, religion, history—and especially by class, for the divide between rich and poor in London was never greater or more destructive in the modern era than in these years. Despite this gulf, Jerry White shows us Londoners going about their business as bankers or beggars, reveling in an enlarging world of public pleasures, indulging in crimes both great and small—amidst the tightening sinews of power and regulation, and the hesitant beginnings of London democracy.

A Great and Monstrous Thing

A Great and Monstrous Thing PDF Author: Jerry White
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674073173
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
London in the eighteenth century was a new city, risen from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1666 that had destroyed half its homes and great public buildings. The century that followed was an era of vigorous expansion and large-scale projects, of rapidly changing culture and commerce, as huge numbers of people arrived in the shining city, drawn by its immense wealth and power and its many diversions. Borrowing a phrase from Daniel Defoe, Jerry White calls London “this great and monstrous thing,” the grandeur of its new buildings and the glitter of its high life shadowed by poverty and squalor. A Great and Monstrous Thing offers a street-level view of the city: its public gardens and prisons, its banks and brothels, its workshops and warehouses—and its bustling, jostling crowds. White introduces us to shopkeepers and prostitutes, men and women of fashion and genius, street-robbers and thief-takers, as they play out the astonishing drama of life in eighteenth-century London. What emerges is a picture of a society fractured by geography, politics, religion, history—and especially by class, for the divide between rich and poor in London was never greater or more destructive in the modern era than in these years. Despite this gulf, Jerry White shows us Londoners going about their business as bankers or beggars, reveling in an enlarging world of public pleasures, indulging in crimes both great and small—amidst the tightening sinews of power and regulation, and the hesitant beginnings of London democracy.

Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London

Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London PDF Author: Tim Hitchcock
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826427154
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
London in the 18th century was the greatest city in the world. It was a magnet that drew men and women from the rest of England in huge numbers. For a few the streets were paved with gold, but for the majority it was a harsh world with little guarantee of money or food. For the poor and destitute, London's streets offered little more than the barest living. Yet men, women and children found a great variety of ways to eke out their existence, sweeping roads, selling matches, singing ballads and performing all sorts of menial labor. Many of these activities, apart from the direct begging of the disabled, depended on an appeal to charity, but one often mixed with threats and promises. Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London provides a remarkable insight into the lives of Londoners, for all of whom the demands of charity and begging were part of their everyday world.

London Lives

London Lives PDF Author: Tim Hitchcock
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107025273
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 479

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Book Description
This book surveys the lives and experiences of hundreds of thousands of eighteenth-century non-elite Londoners in the evolution of the modern world.

The Small House in Eighteenth-century London

The Small House in Eighteenth-century London PDF Author: Peter Guillery
Publisher: Paul Mellon Ctr for Studies
ISBN: 9780300102383
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
London's modest eighteenth-century houses - those inhabited by artisans and labourers in the unseen parts of Georgian London - can tell us much about the culture of that period. This fascinating book examines largely forgotten small houses that survive from the eighteenth century and sheds new light on both the era's urban architecture and the lives of a culturally distinctive metropolitan population. Peter Guillery discusses how and where, by and for whom the houses were built, stressing vernacular continuity and local variability. He investigates the effects of creeping industrialisation (both on house building and on the occupants), and considers the nature of speculative suburban growth. Providing rich and evocative illustrations, he compares these houses to urban domestic architecture elsewhere, as in North America, and suggests that the eighteenth-century vernacular metropolis has enduring influence.

City of Laughter

City of Laughter PDF Author: Vic Gatrell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802716024
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 720

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Book Description
Drawing upon the satirical prints of the eighteenth century, the author explores what made Londoners laugh and offers insight into the origins of modern attitudes toward sex, celebrity, and ridicule.

The London Hanged

The London Hanged PDF Author: Peter Linebaugh
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780521457583
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
In a time characterized by increasing attempts of propertied classes to criminalize the customary rights of the working classes, the gallows at Tyburn became the dramatic focus of a struggle between the rich & the poor within a century of unparalleled growth in trade & commerce.

London Life in the 18th Century

London Life in the 18th Century PDF Author: Mary Dorothy George
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Labor and laboring classes
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description


Disorderly Women in Eighteenth-Century London

Disorderly Women in Eighteenth-Century London PDF Author: Tony Henderson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317889886
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This is the first full-length study of prostitution in London during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It is a compelling account, exposing the real lives of the capital's prostitutes, and also shedding light on London society as a whole, its policing systems and its attitudes towards the female urban poor. Drawing on the archives of London's parishes, jury records, reports from Southwark gaol as well as other sources which have been overlooked by historians, it provides a fascinating study for all those interested in Georgian society.

Walking the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London

Walking the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London PDF Author: Clare Brant
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191557625
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Walking the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London will entertain and inform all who are interested in literature, history, and the city of London. This unique book invites the reader to walk along the dirty, crowded, and fascinating streets of eighteenth-century London in an unusual way. Nine leading experts from the fields of literature, history, classics, gender, biography, geography, and costume, offer different interpretations of John Gay's poem Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716). The poem - a lively, funny, and thought-provoking statement about urban life - accompanies the essays, in a new edition with comprehensive notes. The introduction paints a vibrant picture of London in 1716, depicting Gay's fascinating life and literary world, offering an invaluable guide to the poem. Together, these elements allow the heat, grime, and smells of the underbelly of eighteenth-century London come alive in new ways.

Eating the Empire

Eating the Empire PDF Author: Troy Bickham
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789142458
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
When students gathered in a London coffeehouse and smoked tobacco; when Yorkshire women sipped sugar-infused tea; or when a Glasgow family ate a bowl of Indian curry, were they aware of the mechanisms of imperial rule and trade that made such goods readily available? In Eating the Empire, Troy Bickham unfolds the extraordinary role that food played in shaping Britain during the long eighteenth century (circa 1660–1837), when such foreign goods as coffee, tea, and sugar went from rare luxuries to some of the most ubiquitous commodities in Britain—reaching even the poorest and remotest of households. Bickham reveals how trade in the empire’s edibles underpinned the emerging consumer economy, fomenting the rise of modern retailing, visual advertising, and consumer credit, and, via taxes, financed the military and civil bureaucracy that secured, governed, and spread the British Empire.