The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London Paperback – July 14, 2015

I'm an actress and screenwriter and this is PERFECT for getting into the life and times of the Dickensian era. It's so thorough you can literally smell the layers of filth of the times (do keep smelling salts handy, and a good cuppa ;-), but got to marvel at the ingenuity of people finding a way to make a bob. Truly indispensable book if you're working with this time period, or just curious!

This is horribly depressing in so many ways. The plight of the lower class is so heartrending, and it definitely gave me a new appreciation of my cushy, modern life. That said, it's chalked full of information and is a must-read for anyone interested in that time period. It's a fascinating delve into the world of Victorian London with a focus on the middle to lower class that paints a much different picture of that era and city than modern audiences are familiar with.I also enjoyed that it was quite specific with dates and years. It seems like a lot of books I've read about the era don't differentiate between early, mid, and late Victorian era, and it's too big a time period and too revolutionary a time period to have it all lumped in. Plus, it gives a lot of context by explaining how it differs from the Georgian era before it, which is really helpful.The reason I'm not giving this five stars is that it definitely dragged in some places (did it really need an entire chapter dedicated to prostitution?) and the organization was a little wonky at times. Otherwise, it's a stellar book and is stuffed full of tidbits. My copy is filled with highlights and notes, and it's one of the best books I've read on the subject so far.

Judith Flanders knows her stuff. A detailed, nuanced, exceedingly well informed description of almost every aspect of Victorian London. Flanders' knowledge of her subject is so deep that she can deduce which specific street or alley Dickens had in mind when he set a particular scene in one of his novels. Anyone interested in the history of London or the work of Charles Dickens' should enjoy this fine book.

As a reader of Dicken's and 19th century English literature for a long time this fill in so many gaps in my understanding of how everyday London worked and people lived in it. And the reader was excellent.

This book is packed full of information about all aspects of Victorian London life. It reads easily and the tone is not boring. The only drawbacks are if you don't know anything about London or have never read Dickens, then you might have a hard time knowing where all of the mentioned locations are.Secondly, there's not enough pictures, diagrams, and maps for this book - I think that including a good deal of those throughout would have been helpful to the reader.Thirdly, in some chapters the author draws things out longer than they need be, leading myself to skip over entire sections. Getting to the point without running around for pages and pages would be better.

Fantastic book highly recommended, rally brings Victorian London to life in a street view sort of way.However I did find a brutal typo right off the bat, which may confuse readers. The author states one guinea coin was worth 110 pounds. In fact guineas were each worth 1 pound 1 shilling. That’s quite a difference.

Judith Flanders is amazing at bringing a city to life so you feel as if you have been there. I was entranced from the first of the book right through the end. This is lively writing, not static words on the page. I hope you buy it and find it as entrancing as I did!

This is a wonderful, detailed book about historical aspects of London during Dickens' life. I had read a previous book by the same author (Victorian House) which was equally excellent. I am still in the process of reading it but I highly recommend this author for detailed, historical information during the Victorian period.

If you want to do deep dive research on the 19th century, this book is fantastic. Judith covers so much info on the time that it's easy to picture what the streets of London looked, smelled, and felt like; additionally there's a wealth of maps, images, and guides that really help you grasp the world you're delving into.Easily in the top 5 of the many books I've been reading to buff up on my Victorian knowledge.

libro particolare racconta la londra del 1800 ai tempi di dickens. molto particolareggiato e pieno di notizie che lasciano a bocca aperta.

Original, gossipy, full of colour, sounds and smells, this is one of the most all-encompassing works I've read in some time. Years of Dickens had convinced me that there were few areas of his work left to explore. Thank you, Judith Flanders for destroying that embarrassingly stupid illusion. Having studied Dickens at University in the early seventies, I recall the smug teaching stance taken by certain tutors. Essentially, Wilson's 'The Wound and the Bow' had shifted the direction of scholarship; Johnson's biography was the last required word; Hillis Miller had done the final spadework; and Leavis had jumped belatedly on the bandwagon. Certain minor critics were helpful - Philip Collins, and Harry Stone (whose great works in the following decades achieved so much) for example. But we'd probably reached the terminus of Dickens Studies.Of course, that was nonsense. Over the years, new biographies, new psychological readings, new structuralist and post-structuralist works have been produced. Few have brought the combination of insight and pleasure of Judith Flanders. Buiding on massive research, she creates a vision of the London of Dickens, and proceeds to illuminate his concerns, ideas and knowledge of his world by taking the lid off the squalor, the villainy, the 'idealistic' 'planners, the diseases and the poverty. And she sent me back to Dickens with a far greater awareness than I'd expected. Her pace is rapid, and her prose deftly readable,but that's not the key thing. She writes with a cataloguer's memory and a journalist's edge. While history purists might condemn her method, and the Lit Crit brigade object to her raciness, the Dickens reader will respond with passion as Flanders hurtles off in her grubby mail-coach into areas which have almost been too dark to explore in the past.And if you know nothing of London's history, and little about Dickens, you will find many treasures here.

Part of history sometimes miss understood or unknown that clarifies how our close relatives used to live. Very informative and entertaining. Recommended.

Excellent research.An eye opener when it comes to the description of the living and working conditions of the general population. All those who say that it's oh-so-bad today, and that the gap between rich and poor is enormous, they should read this book. And reconsider.