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Article contents
Henry Mayhew, Urban Ecologist
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2020
Abstract
This article argues that Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor articulates a mid-nineteenth-century urban ecology that resonates with the “open” and “unfinished” form of midcentury London and Mayhew's London Labour itself. Mayhew's extensive elaboration of midcentury recycling, repurposing, and reusing practices is put into dialogue with the volumes’ print innovations and, in particular, print recycling practices. Drawing on the passage in which Mayhew describes his ecological vision most compactly—itself recycled from an earlier work—it illustrates how these volumes unite “the ragpicker” and the writer in the production of open and usable forms generative of social change.
- Type
- Edge
- Information
- Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 48 , Special Issue 1: Open Ecologies , Spring 2020 , pp. 219 - 241
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020
Footnotes
Many thanks to Sara Adams, Devin Griffiths, Jenna Herdman, Deanna Kreisel, and especially Janice Schroeder for invaluable feedback on the essay.
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