Complete 3 Volume Set - Does Not Include Supplementary 4th Volume - All 78 Plate Engravings/Map Present As Called For.
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London Labour and the London Poor is Henry Mayhew's monumental and pioneering investigation into the social and economic life of Victorian London's working classes, first published in the early 1860s. Drawing on extensive interviews, first-hand observation, and statistical analysis, Mayhew documents in remarkable detail the lives of street sellers, costermongers, artisans, beggars, criminals, and the destitute, categorising them with stark clarity as those who will work, cannot work, and will not work. The result is one of the earliest and most influential works of modern social journalism, capturing the rhythms, hardships, and moral complexities of urban life at the height of Britain's industrial age.
Across the three volumes, Mayhew combines narrative reportage with economic data, wage tables, and sociological commentary, creating an unprecedented portrait of labour, poverty, and survival in nineteenth-century London. The work is richly illustrated with engraved plates depicting street traders, labourers, and the urban poor at work and at rest, images that have become iconic visual records of the Victorian underclass. These illustrations, alongside Mayhew's vivid prose, lend extraordinary immediacy and humanity to the text, transforming statistics into lived experience and ensuring the work's enduring relevance for historians and readers alike.
This complete three-volume set, lacking only the later supplementary fourth volume, retains all 78 engraved plates and maps as called for, and stands as one of the most important social documents of the Victorian era. Both confronting and compassionate, London Labour and the London Poor remains a cornerstone of social history and an essential reference for understanding the origins of modern urban sociology. This work would appeal particularly to collectors of Victorian social history, historians of labour and poverty, and readers interested in the human realities behind nineteenth-century industrial Britain."
General wear and fading to covers with heavy sun fading to outer spines as shown. Old water damage to back of Volume 1. Binding in general is excellent with firm covers, no loose pages and all plates and map present as called for. Pages very clean and well presented with no foxing. No inscriptions. An excellent 3 volume set (does not include supplementary volume 4 but 3 volumes complete in their own right) in good to very good condition overall. Please study photos to further understand condition.
