Paved With Gold: Or The Romance And Reality Of The London Streets
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket - some marks on spine and corners
Pages: Some moisture damage
Condition remarks: good for age - worn and frayed boards with some discolouration; pages - foxed with some moisture damage; some tears along the edges; tissue guards over engravings -
Beneath the gaslit glitter of Victorian London lies a world of desperate struggle, and Paved with Gold: or The Romance and Reality of the London Streets chronicles that world with unflinching candour. Augustus Mayhew — one of the celebrated Brothers Mayhew, whose collective work illuminated the lives of the Victorian poor — presents a vivid, street-level portrait of London's underclass, weaving together the romance and the raw reality of those who lived and laboured in the city's shadows. Described on its own title page as An Unfashionable Novel, the work announces its subversive intent from the outset, giving voice to costermongers, crossing-sweepers, and the teeming multitudes who rarely found representation in polite literature, accompanied by the evocative illustrations of H. K. Browne (the renowned Phiz). Drawing on the rich social documentary tradition pioneered by his brother Henry Mayhew in London Labour and the London Poor, Augustus crafts a narrative that sits at the compelling intersection of fiction and journalism, blending compassionate storytelling with sharp sociological observation. The novel stands as a significant Victorian artefact, reflecting an era of stark inequality and moral reckoning, its pages animated by a reformist spirit that challenges the reader to see the city anew. Published by the prestigious house of Chapman and Hall in 1858 — the very publisher of Dickens — it takes its rightful place alongside the great social novels of the age. For anyone captivated by the hidden histories of great cities, the question it poses remains arrestingly modern: who truly pays the price for a society's wealth?
Author: Augustus Mayhew
Format: Hardback
Published: 1858, Chapman and Hall
Genre: Historical fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket - some marks on spine and corners
Pages: Some moisture damage
Condition remarks: good for age - worn and frayed boards with some discolouration; pages - foxed with some moisture damage; some tears along the edges; tissue guards over engravings -
Beneath the gaslit glitter of Victorian London lies a world of desperate struggle, and Paved with Gold: or The Romance and Reality of the London Streets chronicles that world with unflinching candour. Augustus Mayhew — one of the celebrated Brothers Mayhew, whose collective work illuminated the lives of the Victorian poor — presents a vivid, street-level portrait of London's underclass, weaving together the romance and the raw reality of those who lived and laboured in the city's shadows. Described on its own title page as An Unfashionable Novel, the work announces its subversive intent from the outset, giving voice to costermongers, crossing-sweepers, and the teeming multitudes who rarely found representation in polite literature, accompanied by the evocative illustrations of H. K. Browne (the renowned Phiz). Drawing on the rich social documentary tradition pioneered by his brother Henry Mayhew in London Labour and the London Poor, Augustus crafts a narrative that sits at the compelling intersection of fiction and journalism, blending compassionate storytelling with sharp sociological observation. The novel stands as a significant Victorian artefact, reflecting an era of stark inequality and moral reckoning, its pages animated by a reformist spirit that challenges the reader to see the city anew. Published by the prestigious house of Chapman and Hall in 1858 — the very publisher of Dickens — it takes its rightful place alongside the great social novels of the age. For anyone captivated by the hidden histories of great cities, the question it poses remains arrestingly modern: who truly pays the price for a society's wealth?