Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: H. J. Dyos and the urban process, by David Reeder
- Part One The Urbanising World
- Part Two Transport and Urban Transformation
- Part Three The Urban Fabric
- 9 The slums of Victorian London
- 10 The speculative builders and developers of Victorian London
- 11 A Victorian speculative builder: Edward Yates
- 12 A guide to the streets of Victorian London
- Conclusion Urban history in the United Kingdom: the ‘Dyos phenomenon’ and after, by David Cannadine
- Appendix: A bibliography of the published writings of H. J. Dyos
- Notes
12 - A guide to the streets of Victorian London
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: H. J. Dyos and the urban process, by David Reeder
- Part One The Urbanising World
- Part Two Transport and Urban Transformation
- Part Three The Urban Fabric
- 9 The slums of Victorian London
- 10 The speculative builders and developers of Victorian London
- 11 A Victorian speculative builder: Edward Yates
- 12 A guide to the streets of Victorian London
- Conclusion Urban history in the United Kingdom: the ‘Dyos phenomenon’ and after, by David Cannadine
- Appendix: A bibliography of the published writings of H. J. Dyos
- Notes
Summary
Monstrous, marvellous, prodigious London, -
Thou giant city, - mighty in thy size and power,
Surpassing all that was, or is, or may be.
From the title-page of [John Britton], Picture of London (26th edn, 1829)‘In the presence of London, it is just as it would be if you should meet a man fifty feet high …. You would be in a state of perpetual astonishment.’ The words come from an obscure contributor to a family magazine, writing shortly before Collins' Illustrated Atlas of London was first published in 1854, but they express an attitude that was universal. ‘The extension of the metropolis of the British empire’, declared the Gentleman's Magazine, ‘is one of the marvels of the last century’ - a multiplication of numbers, and ‘elasticity’ and ‘expansibility’ that was ‘almost oppressively palpable’, that outdid all the capitals of Europe and was barely overtaken in the public mind by the gold-rushing growth of San Francisco. ‘London has not grown’, complained one writer in Household Words,
in any natural, reasonable, understandable way … it has swollen with frightful, alarming, supernatural rapidity. It has taken you unawares; it has dropped upon you without warning; it has started up without notice; it has grown with stealthy rapidity, from a mouse into a mastodon.
It had in fact multiplied only two and a half times in about two and a half generations, measured in London terms.
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- Information
- Exploring the Urban PastEssays in Urban History by H. J. Dyos, pp. 190 - 202Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1982