The World of Charles Dickens: Victorian Era London

From the book jacket: '"The World of Charles Dickens" presents the author's life and works in a highly illustrated volume that takes a thematic all-encompassing look at this brilliant writer and the society that so influenced his work. It also looks at both the public and private Dickens--his beliefs, his passions and his relationships.'

From the book jacket: "To Londoners, the years 1840 to 1870 were years of dramatic change and achievement. As suburbs expanded and roads multiplied, London was ripped apart to build railway lines and stations and life-saving sewers...Liza Picard shows us the physical reality of daily life. She takes us into schools and prisons, churches, and cemeteries. Many practical innovations of the time--flushing lavatories, underground railways, umbrellas, letter boxes, driving on the left--point the way forward. But this was also, at least until the 1850s, a city of cholera outbreaks, transportation to Australia, public executions, and the workhouse, where children could be sold by their parents for as little as 12 pounds and streetpeddlers and sold sparrows for a penny, tied by the leg for children to play with. Cruelty and hypocrisy flourished alongside invention, industry, and philanthropy."

From the book jacket: "From the moment Charles Dickens, the century's best-loved novelist and London's greatest observer, arrived in the city in 1822, he obsessively walked its streets, recording its pleasures, curiosities, and cruelties. Now, with him, Judith Flanders leads us through the markets, transport systems, sewers, rivers, slums, alleys, cemeteries, gin palaces, chophouses and entertainment emporia of Dickens' London, to reveal the Victorian capital in all its variety, vibrancy, and squalor."