Victorian Babylon: People, Streets, and Images in Nineteenth-Century London (original) (raw)

2001, Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies

This volume seeks to display mid-nineteenth century views on modernity as well as to investigate aspects of modernisation in Victorian London. Observers then and now could not and cannot help but note the piecemeal redevelopment of London in this period, compared, for instance, with Paris. British contemporaries were inclined to attribute the difference to the centralisation, and from 1851, the autocratic control, inherent in the more comprehensive rebuilding of Paris, compared with their own democratic institutions. Presumably they forgot that Britain had less of a democratic system of government than France, and overlooked, what this author notes, the inhibiting effects in London of the competing claims of vestries and private water and other companies. Another restraint on modernisation noted by Nead was the multitemporality of modernity; the Victorian present could not escape from the past. Parisians seem to have been less tenderhearted in their treatment of the old, however picturesque. Both of these factors weave through the three parts of this book. First, under the heading, Mapping and Movement, the rationalisation of the supply of water and improvements in transport, above and below ground, are reviewed. Part Two deals with Gas and Light musing on the practical and poetical impact of the introduction of gas and on an aspect of London's cultural/entertainment life for which gas lighting was indispensable, the Cremorne Pleasure Gardens. The final part, Streets and Obscenity, concentrates on Holywell Street, the centre of the `dirty' book trade.