Regarded as one of the most significant and far-reaching photobooks in the history of the medium, Street Life in London - first published in 1877 - is a ground-breaking work of social documentation which brought together for the first time images, analysis and the spoken word to provide a new kind of proximity to the conditions of poverty.
This new edition presents these exceptional images in their original rich tones and remarkable detail, together with the full original text and a new historical introduction.
When, in the 1870s, Street Life in London's authors, photographer John Thomson and journalist Adolphe Smith, set out to profile the people who worked and lived on the city's streets, they did not expect their project to last only a year. Both wanted to revolutionise the representation of poverty, each in his own way, and in many of their images and texts they succeeded - a quality which makes their book thrillingly innovative to today's readers, but which left Victorian viewers baffled.
Introduction
Emily Kathryn Morgan, Iowa State University
London Nomades
London Cabmen
Covent Garden Flower Women
Recruiting Sergeants at Westminster
Street Floods in Lambeth
Public Disinfectors
Street Doctors
Street Advertising
Clapham Common Industries
Caney the Clown
Dealer in Fancy-Ware
The Temperance Sweep
The Dramatic Shoe-Black
Tickets, the Card Dealer
The Old Clothes of St Giles
A Convicts' Home
The Wall Worker
Covent Garden Labourers
Halfpenny Ices
Black Jack
The Cheap Fish of St Giles
Cast-Iron Billy
Workers on the Silent Highway
The Street Fruit Trade
The London Boardmen
The Water-Cart
Mush-Fakers and Ginger Beer Makers
November Effigies
Hookey Alf of Whitechapel
The Crawlers
Italian Street Musicians
The Street Locksmith
The Seller of Shell-Fish
Flying Dustmen
Old Furniture
The Independent Shoe-Black
Scottish photographer John Thomson (1837-1921) came to Street Life in London already a seasoned photographer and traveller, his life and attitudes shaped by the ten years he lived in Asia from 1862-72. His prior experiences influenced the choices he made and the opportunities he pursued after his permanent return to Britain. Street Life in London was, at least in part, the product of these experiences.
Adolphe Smith (1846-1924) was a prolific radical writer, crusader for wide-ranging reforms, supporter of women's rights, dedicated socialist and a participant in both the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune.
