Poverty And Prostitution: A Study Of Victorian Prostitutes In York
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.
Edition: First ed.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
In the gaslit backstreets and workhouses of Victorian York, a hidden world of female desperation and survival played out far from polite society's gaze — and Frances Finnegan's meticulously researched study brings this world into unflinching focus. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources including police records, hospital registers, and institutional archives, Poverty and Prostitution: A Study of Victorian Prostitutes in York chronicles the lives of women who turned to sex work not out of moral failure, but out of economic necessity, illuminating the stark social forces — poverty, domestic violence, and the collapse of family structures — that drove them to the streets of one of England's most historic cities. Finnegan argues with quiet but devastating authority that prostitution in Victorian England was inseparable from the broader machinery of poverty, challenging the moralising narratives that dominated contemporary discourse and much subsequent historiography. Her prose is precise and compassionate, grounding large social questions in the granular, human detail of individual lives recovered from obscurity. A landmark work in both Victorian social history and gender studies, this volume remains essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the underside of the nineteenth century's vaunted progress — and leaves the reader asking how much, if anything, has truly changed.
Author: Frances Finnegan
Format: Hardback
Published: 1979, Cambridge University Press
Genre: British & Irish history
Edition: First ed.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
In the gaslit backstreets and workhouses of Victorian York, a hidden world of female desperation and survival played out far from polite society's gaze — and Frances Finnegan's meticulously researched study brings this world into unflinching focus. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources including police records, hospital registers, and institutional archives, Poverty and Prostitution: A Study of Victorian Prostitutes in York chronicles the lives of women who turned to sex work not out of moral failure, but out of economic necessity, illuminating the stark social forces — poverty, domestic violence, and the collapse of family structures — that drove them to the streets of one of England's most historic cities. Finnegan argues with quiet but devastating authority that prostitution in Victorian England was inseparable from the broader machinery of poverty, challenging the moralising narratives that dominated contemporary discourse and much subsequent historiography. Her prose is precise and compassionate, grounding large social questions in the granular, human detail of individual lives recovered from obscurity. A landmark work in both Victorian social history and gender studies, this volume remains essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the underside of the nineteenth century's vaunted progress — and leaves the reader asking how much, if anything, has truly changed.