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The People of the Abyss Paperback – Illustrated, 10 September 2018
Jack London (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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The People of the Abyss is a book by Jack London (Call of the Wild, White Fang) about life in the East End of London in 1902. He wrote this first-hand account after living in the East End (including the Whitechapel District) for several weeks, sometimes staying in workhouses or sleeping on the streets. In his attempt to understand the working-class of this deprived area of London the author stayed as a lodger with a poor family. The conditions he experienced and wrote about were the same as those endured by an estimated 500,000 of the contemporary London poor.
Includes 73 photographs by the author.
- ISBN-100999428322
- ISBN-13978-0999428320
- EditionIllustrated
- Publication date10 September 2018
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions13.34 x 1.52 x 20.32 cm
- Print length238 pages
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Product details
- Publisher : Antipodes Press; Illustrated edition (10 September 2018)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 238 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0999428322
- ISBN-13 : 978-0999428320
- Dimensions : 13.34 x 1.52 x 20.32 cm
- Customer Reviews:
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About the authors
John Griffith "Jack" London (born John Griffith Chaney, January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone.
Some of his most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen", and of the San Francisco Bay area in The Sea Wolf.
London was part of the radical literary group "The Crowd" in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers. He wrote several powerful works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss, and The War of the Classes.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by published by L C Page and Company Boston 1903 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Peter Higginbotham became fascinated by the workhouse when, tracing his family history, he discovered that one of his forebears had died in such an institution. His extensive researches resulted in a number of books including the much-praised 'Workhouse Encyclopedia', 'Voices from the Workhouse', and 'A Grim Almanac of the Workhouse'.
His latest book, 'Workhouses of London and the South-East', is a richly illustrated survey of over than 600 establishments in London and the historical counties of Berkshire, Kent, Middlesex, Surrey and Sussex.
One of his favourite previous works, 'The Workhouse Cookbook', is actually more of a history of the workhouse rather a recipe book but clearly confused bookshops who mostly filed it under "cookery" rather than "history"! It was followed by his entertaining history of the English prison system, 'The Prison Cookbook'.
Peter, who lives in West Yorkshire, has frequently contributed to magazines, radio and TV programmes such as "Who Do You Think You Are?" and "Heir Hunters".
Peter has also extensively researched the history of residential institutions for Britain's children. His 2017 book 'Children's Homes' surveys a wide variety of establishments covering charitably run orphanages, reformatories, industrial and approved schools, homes run by religious and occupational bodies, local authority homes, training ships, and institutions for children in poverty or with special needs.
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What strikes me is that if we’ve seen and witnessed such unspeakable living conditions (and, clearly, in the case of the East End, moved on), why haven’t the lessons learned been used to improve people’s lives in all the other conurbations of the UK - and elsewhere in the world?
The book was very engaging and easy to read - and built to a cogent climax. Lovely!



What is this technology and why should you care? Well it means that out of copyright books-being those published before 1923 in the US-can be scanned and reprinted by anybody, but in the case of this book and this publisher by a COMPUTER, and sold to you.
This seems to mean that you get no human intervention and that spacing conventions are absent: notably between chapter headings and text, between subheadings and text and even between the end of one chapter and the start of the next.
Everything in this miserable little edition is cramped together with no visual style (and this includes a size 9 font to save space and, presumably, paper).
The publishers, General Books dot Net offer a disclaimer behind the front cover "How We Made This Book For You" which states that they feel it is more important to offer a, possibly out of print, book rather than not at all: but there are many of other editions of the book listed here. They also offer a link to examine this book and others (presumably all conforming to the above out of copyright) for free on their website.
But I am not interested in the offer of reading or examining electronically scanned books.
I want to participate in the pleasure that a book can bring, and this technology-even if we assume it is not a scam- brings the reader none.
This review unfortunately doesn't address the contents of Jack London's book, because the edition is too unpleasant to read: buy yourself another.
