Outcast London
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:
Condition: Good to fair. Jacket: good, worn/faded (refer to image). Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.
Victorian London was a city of staggering wealth and appalling destitution, and Outcast London lays bare the social mechanics of that contradiction with forensic precision. Gareth Stedman Jones chronicles the lives of the casual poor — the labourers, hawkers, and street dwellers trapped in the cyclical poverty of London's East End — and reconstructs the ideological and economic forces that kept them there. Drawing on contemporary social surveys, Parliamentary reports, and the writings of Victorian reformers, the work presents a rigorous account of how the metropolitan labour market bred structural unemployment and social exclusion on a vast scale. Jones argues that middle-class Victorian attitudes towards poverty were shaped not by ignorance, but by a calculated fear of social disorder — a fear that ultimately drove charitable and legislative responses more concerned with moral policing than genuine relief. Written with the analytical authority of a Cambridge social historian, the book reshaped the field of urban history and remains essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the relationship between capitalism, class, and the city. What does it mean for a society to create outcasts — and then punish them for existing?
Author: Gareth Stedman Jones
Format: Hardback
Genre: British & Irish history
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good to fair. Jacket: good, worn/faded (refer to image). Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.
Victorian London was a city of staggering wealth and appalling destitution, and Outcast London lays bare the social mechanics of that contradiction with forensic precision. Gareth Stedman Jones chronicles the lives of the casual poor — the labourers, hawkers, and street dwellers trapped in the cyclical poverty of London's East End — and reconstructs the ideological and economic forces that kept them there. Drawing on contemporary social surveys, Parliamentary reports, and the writings of Victorian reformers, the work presents a rigorous account of how the metropolitan labour market bred structural unemployment and social exclusion on a vast scale. Jones argues that middle-class Victorian attitudes towards poverty were shaped not by ignorance, but by a calculated fear of social disorder — a fear that ultimately drove charitable and legislative responses more concerned with moral policing than genuine relief. Written with the analytical authority of a Cambridge social historian, the book reshaped the field of urban history and remains essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the relationship between capitalism, class, and the city. What does it mean for a society to create outcasts — and then punish them for existing?