Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth-century London [Hardcover]

"There has been a raft of books on London... But none is likely to be as scholarly, as clever or as necessary as Lynda Nead's Victorian Babylon... Nead has written a wonderful book that changes the way we think about cities." Kathryn Hughes, The Daily Telegraph; "compelling... Nead is writing as an academic, and so it is fascinating to find what might otherwise be dismissed as a novelist's fantasy here given a theoretical underpinning in impeccably sourced and measured prose." Tom Holland, Literary Review; "This genuinely interdisciplinary study... makes a major contribution to our knowledge of the lived experience of the Victorian city." Timothy Barringer, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians; "Provocative and brilliant." Susan P. Casteras, Nineteenth Century Studies; "Splendid... Nead brings an art historian's fine sense of visual detail; indeed, one of the most striking features of the book is the wonderful illustrative material." John Marriott, History Today; "An intriguing study of London at the crossroads of modern history... Well-researched and insightful." Rebecca Ittner, Victorian Homes; "An evocative and visually stunning account of the shifting geographies, temporalities, and visions of mid-Victorian London... Well-researched and beautifully written." Erika, D. Rappaport, Albion; "Nead not only provides a more accurate regendering of the historical townscape but enriches our understanding of modern urban experience." Peter Bailey, Journal of Social History" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

In this fascinating and innovative 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.

The book draws on texts and images of many kinds -- including acts of Parliament, literature, newspaper reports, private letters, maps, paintings, advertisements, posters, and banned obscene publications. Taking a highly interdisciplinary approach, Nead explores such intriguing 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.

Lynda Nead teaches history of art at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the author of Myths of Sexuality: Representations of Victorian Women and The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality