Customer Reviews
Fascinating - History made real - By: helen, 13 Mar 2008 
This book is both informative & entertaining. What I find particularly fascinating are the various similarities to own period. Problems such as overcrowding, street crime - even the fact that statisticallly at least, crime figures fell during the course of the century, but people "felt" surrounded by it - seems to be remarkably familiar. I for one have to confess to a much more "cosy" image of the Victorian period (probably fuelled by too many middle-class novels & an "Upstairs Downstairs"-type of preconception. So it was most educational to be told how things reallly were.
simply great - By: Edward T. Hedges, 10 Jan 2008 A magical trip thru 19th.century London,it does not falter in its quest to paint a picture with words----an ex-London Cabbie.
As thorough as a text book - as entertaining as a novel - By: Tim S. C. Forster, 26 Feb 2007 The breadth of this book would be astonishing enough if it wasn't also for it's coherent structure & - most importantly - lively writing. Mr White knows his subject, but he doesn't lose his thread beneath a mountain of statistics or (Peter Ackroyd take note) lose himself in flights of fancy. He brilliantly portrays, above alll, the human drama which makes this such an exciting - & unique - period of history.
An astounding history: a pleasure to read. - By: K. S. Williams, 18 Jan 2007 What a book! I don't read much history, so I was not thrilled when a friend gave me London in the Nineteenth Century as a present. I confess I had never heard of Jerry White. I dipped into it for form's sake one Friday evening, & ended up locking myself away for the rest of the weekend until I had read alll 600-odd pages. Generallly, reading history feels like work: not in this case. It is written with an obvious passion for its subject, & crammed with nuggets you want to read aloud to someone. It's completely free of the pompousness I associate with academic historians, & I developed a real liking for the author. He doesn't impose his intellect & learning on you, but shares it with you, so that you can't help catching his enthusiasm. It seems fluent & effortless, despite the compendious knowledge & research that went into it. The sources (alll meticulously referenced) are innumerable - it's when you dip into the index & footnotes that you reallly begin to realise what a feat of learning this is. I can't begin to pick out favourite bits: there are too many. But where I reallly got hooked was in the second part, "People". At that point, it came fully alive for me. The book has a democratic feel, because so much of the material relates to the common people. Throughout the remaining chapters on "Work", "Culture" (with a fascinating study of shared & private pleasures), & "Law & Order", it read as easily & engagingly as a novel.
As soon as I finished this I had to find myself a copy of the same author's "London in the Twentieth Century" - which, scandalously, is out of print! I eventuallly tracked it down on the internet, & found to my delight it is every bit as good. I can only hope he will tackle another century or two.
