Victorian London cover art

Victorian London

The Life of a City, 1840-1870

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Victorian London

By: Liza Picard
Narrated by: Anton Lesser
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

 Like her previous books, this book is the result of the author's passionate interest in the realities of everyday life, and the conditions in which most people lived, so often left out of history books.

This period of mid-Victorian London encompasses a huge range of subjects: Victoria's wedding and the place of the royals in popular esteem; how the very poor lived, the underworld, prostitution, crime, prisons and transportation; the public utilities, Bazalgette on sewers and road design, Chadwick on pollution and sanitation; private charities, Peabody, Burdett Coutts, and workhouses; new terraced housing and transport, trains, omnibuses, and the Underground; furniture and decor; families and the position of women; the prosperous middle classes and their new shops, e.g. Peter Jones, Harrods; entertaining and servants, food and drink; unlimited liability and bankruptcy; the rich, the marriage market, taxes and anti-semitism; the Empire, recruitment and press-gangs.

The period begins with the closing of the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons and ends with the first (steam-operated) Underground trains and the first Gilbert & Sullivan. All the splendours and horrors of Victorian life will be vividly recalled.

©2005 Liza Picard (P)2005 Orion Publishing Group Ltd. 19th Century Europe Great Britain Modern England Middle Ages

Listeners also enjoyed...

 A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain cover art
The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England cover art
London Labour and the London Poor cover art
Restoration London cover art
Dr. Johnson's London cover art
Elizabeth's London cover art
Jack the Ripper's Streets of Terror cover art
The Housekeeper's Tale cover art
London in the Nineteenth Century cover art
Murderesses in Victorian Britain cover art
Great and Horrible News: Murder and Mayhem in Early Modern Britain cover art
The Battered Body Beneath the Flagstones, and Other Victorian Scandals cover art
London in the Eighteenth Century cover art
Londonwalks cover art
Uproar! cover art
Journal of the Plague Year cover art

Critic reviews

"Reading her book is like gazing at one of those energetic, crowded canvanses by the Victorian painter William Powell Frith." ( Evening Standard)
All stars
Most relevant
This book really brings early Victorian London to life, and Anton Lesser's voice is so relaxing and easy to listen to. It's a pity the book has been abridged for the audio version, though. I would have liked to hear all of it, hence the four rather than five star rating.

Concise but evocative

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is a wonderful supplement to any reading of Victorian fiction - here is the background. Though the book depends perhaps a little too much on one or two particular sources (hence four stars, not five), this is vivacious, informative, and fascinating. It is beautifully read - Anton Lesser imparts the most complex information is a way which makes it all easy to follow.

Puts Dickens in a very real context

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This book is full of fascinating information about how London was from its dark underbelly to its glittering court. It is especially good at appealing to all the senses through its use of choice images. The narrator's pace is excellent and his voice is very pleasant to listen to. I enjoyed learning about how ordinary men and women coped during this period of rampant industialization and growth.

London as we never knew it!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Completely devoid of any academic "stuffiness", Liza Picard's well-researched, informative book is instantly accessible, and almost conversational in style.

The opening ten to twenty minutes provides us with a pretty honest, graphic account of Victorian London's poor sanitation and overflowing sewage system, with reference to the constant smell of human and animal excrement, decaying food and rotting carcasses. She does not indulge in gratuitous sensationalism, just gives us the truth in plain language. That said, probably best not to start listening to this while having dinner !

Excellent

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
very informative and interesting, a great insight into victorian london

victorian london

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews