Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-245) and index
Contents:
Mapping and movement. Maps and sewers ; Great Victorian ways ; Speaking to the eye ; 'The rape of the glances' ; A narrative of footsteps ; A balloon ascent -- Gas and light. A night ascent ; Daylight by night ; Secrets of the gas ; Cremorne pleasure gardens ; The last of Cremorne -- Streets and obscenity. Moral poisons ; Holywell Street: the London ghetto ; From alleys to courts: obscenity and the mapping of mid-Victorian London ; Temple bar ; Reflections on the ruins of London
Summary:
"In this look at nineteenth-century London, Lynda Nead offers a new account of modernity and metropolitan life. She charts the relationship between London's formation into a modern, organized city in the 1860s and the emergence of new types of production and consumption of visual culture. She considers the role visual images played in the creation of a vibrant and diverse urban culture and how new kinds of publics were created for these representations. Shifting the focus of the history of modernity from Paris to London, Nead here argues for a different understanding of gender and public space in a society where women joined the everyday life of city streets and entered the debates concerning morality, spectacle and adventure." and "The book draws on texts and images of many different kinds - including acts of parliament, literature, newspaper reports, private letters, maps, paintings, advertisements, posters and banned obscene publications. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Nead explores such topics as the efforts of urban improvers to move water, air, traffic, goods and people in the Victorian metropolis; the impact of gas lighting and glass on urban leisure; and the obscenity legislation that emerged in response to new forms of visual mass culture that were perceived as dangerous and pervasive."--Jacket