Product Description

Like its popular and acclaimed predecessor RESTORATION LONDON, this book is the result of the author's passionate interest in the practical details of the everyday life of our ancestors, so often ignored in more conventional history books. Based on every possible contemporary source - diaries, almanacs, newspapers, advice books, memoirs, government papers and reports - Liza Picard examines every aspect of life in London: the streets, houses and gardens; cooking, housework, laundry and shopping; clothes and jewellery, cosmetics and hairdressing; medicine, sex, hobbies, education and etiquette; religion and popular beliefs; law and crime. This book spans the years 1740 to 1770, starting when the gin craze was gaining ground and ending when the east coast of America was still British. Accessible and vivid. Picard's curiosity and enthusiasm are infectious, and she has an instinct for what will interest the lay reader' Daily Telegraph

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #524992 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 7.80" h x 1.10" w x 5.08" l, .71 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In a follow-up to her Restoration London, Picard delivers an encyclopedic distillation of mid-18th-century daily life in Europe's largest, most dynamic city i.e., she conveys what it was like to be Sam Johnson's neighbor. Her zoom lens focuses on living and working conditions of both rich and poor, health and welfare systems (such as they were), crime and punishment, pleasures, cuisine, fads and fashions, manners and customs. She also features the gray fogs, rank smells, black filth, grinding poverty, nearly nonexistent hygiene (among all classes) and rampant disease. Her sources include travelers' accounts, local diarists, the Gentleman's Magazine, the Ladies Dispensary, or Every Woman Her Own Physician and Boswell's frank journals. Readers will not look again at historical portraits of Londoners without shuddering at what most history books conceal. Much of Picard's jocularity succeeds, as when she considers prices: "enough gin to get drunk on" cost a penny, "enough gin to get dead drunk on" cost tuppence; two-and-a-half shillings slightly more than a journeyman tailor's daily pay could get a tooth extracted or buy a chicken; a shilling and a pint of cheap wine afforded one a prostitute. This pleasingly plotless book offers fascinating snapshots of the appealing and the repellant in a particular time and place. 32 pages of color and b&w photos not seen by PW. (July)Forecast: The audience for this may be less specialized than it would seem, as film-goers and readers of period novels will find this chatty book an intriguing contrast to romantic depictions. It may also get a boost from a minor Johnson/Boswell revival, including the publication late last year of Peter Martin's A Life of James Boswell and Adam Sisman's forthcoming Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
After deftly limning place, transport, and pyramidal hierarchy within 1700s London, this witty work by lawyer-author Picard a follow-up to her well-received Restoration London provides entrancing miniature glimpses of its inhabitants. Picard's fascination with the details of past lives led to skillful digging in numerous sources, including contemporary magazines, pamphlets, travel memoirs, guide- and how-to- books, and novels. Divided into four parts covering place, paupers, middle classes, and elites, the book shows that for the poor, life in the heart of first-wave, unregulated, industrial capitalism's heart included adulterated foods; crowded, unsanitary lodgings; wages often below sustenance; endemic illnesses; inadequate clothing. That such conditions parallel those of today's homeless and Third World poor is evident. Chapters on the middle class stray into plutcratic conditions (e.g., fashion, amusements, jewelry, theatre, and decoration), hence the final part's brevity. Throughout, Picard's crisp, accessible prose is polished with wry remarks. This work, which gets at the everyday historical particulars of London life at a fascnating time, will appeal to a wide audience. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries. (Photo inserts not seen.) Nigel Tappin, Huntsville, Ont.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Liza Picard was born in 1927. She read law at the London School of Economics and qualified as a barrister, but did not practise. She worked for many years in the office of the Solicitor of the Inland Revenue and lived in Gray's Inn and Hackney, before retiring to live in Oxford. Restoration London, the result of many years' interest and research into London life, was her first book.