This was a print book I picked up some time ago and finally got around to reading. Normally I don't keep these books after reading - instead I donate them to the local community library for others to enjoy, but this is a rare case where this one will go back on my shelf for use as a reference book. Not that I plan on writing anything Dickensian in the forseeable future, but you never know! The title was wrong grammatically in that it needed another 's' after the apostrophe, but I'll let that slide!
The book was well-researched, and packed with information on the era, but note that while it was full of interesting trivia, it was focused on London as the title indicates, where Dickens resided from the age of ten, not on Portsmouth where Dickens was born, nor on any other corner of England. Dickens lived from 1812 - 1870 and there's a lot of interesting stuff to pick up that you might not even have guessed at had you not got this information to hand. I never knew, for example, that it was illegal to get married in the afternoon during Dickens's lifetime! How about that? Weddings were required to be held in the forenoon. Unfortunately, the book doesn't go into why this was.
The information is packed into nine useful categories:
- The Place
- The People
- Shops and Shopping
- City and Clerk
- Transport and Travel
- Entertainment
- The Poor
- Crime and Punishment
- The Respectable
Each of these made for an engrossing (if sometimes disturbing) read and was solid with information, including many lengthy quotes not just from Dickens, but from others who lived in this time and wrote their observations down, so there are non-English perspectives as well as one or two observations from women. I found it interesting and potentially useful as a writer' resource. I commend it.
