Product Description

London in 1700 was recovering from the ravages of fire, plague and revolution. It was a capital on the verge of a new century, poised between the medieval past and a fabulous future.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18772 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Just the sort of book that gives history a good name, 1700: Scenes from London Life presents almost a glut of the kind of daily life (and death) detail which proves utterly engaging, striking chords of familiarity or describing almost unimaginable worlds. We discover where people lived and worked, how they behaved, what they wore and ate and how horrifically they suffered from illness and injury. A booming London appears modern in its commercialisation and overt materialism. It was "the most magnificent city in Europe" yet "the streets were open sewers" and life there was so precarious that it might be described as "a mere prelude to death". In 1700 the late 17th/early 18th-century world is brought vividly to life by imaginative vignettes drawn from the author's research and by excerpts from contemporary diarists, novelists and commentators, whose works are listed in the extensive bibliography. A relatively long book, it can be dipped into, as the chapters are thematically organised. In fact, open the book at any page and the intriguing detail will leap out and grab you. Creatively written, the text is so colourful that the slightly disappointing illustrations are not much of a drawback. This is a truly enticing read, exploring a period of significant development in London and clearly indicating the importance of this point in England's history. --Karen Tiley.

Sunday Times
"A traditional, well-documented social history, pungent, entertaining and informative"

The Scotsman
"Impressive learning, lightly worn, gives Waller's portrait a wonderfully vivid feel"

Customer Reviews

Fantastic
Fantastically written and divided into sensible chapter this book paints the perfect picture of London in the 1700s. Waller takes various topics marriage, disease, vice, poverty and more and expounds on them using carefully selected primary sources (although there is a rather heavy reliance on the trio of Defoe, Pepys and Swift) to illustrate her points. The book is very readable and contains an amazing assortment of information, for example a sample of the information gleamed from the chapter on marriage is as follows; when women married their legal status was reduced to that of lunatics and outlaws, if a husband killed his wife he was hanged for felony, if a wife killed her husband she was burnt for treason, if a women had an affair the lover was tried for theft of the husbands property so the lover would be confined to debtors prison if he couldn't repay the husband. If someone injured the wife the husband was counted as injured to. The author also remarks on how tolerant English women were to their husband's mistresses and it was not uncommon for the husband to bring his mistress home. The ratio of men to women in those days was 10:13. One could only legally get married between the hours of 8-12 (so most marriage houses had their clocks stuck on 9). On the plus side for women when they married their debts disappeared, thus it was not uncommon for women in debt to marry people already in a debtors prison and thereby absolve themselves of debt, the husbands (whom they often never bothered to see again) couldn't be further prosecuted for debt. Women who married more than one husband at a time were killed.

Vivid history augmented with a lively imagination
This was rather ingeneous. Normally, history works vertically: we begin at William the Bastard Conqueror, or possibly Alfred the Great, and work towards now. Waller does something different here, taking a horizontal slice through the time-line, to present a snapshot of life, living, working and dying, in London in the year 1700.

Sixteen chapters cover almost every conceivable topic, from marriage, childbirth, disease and death, through fashion and food, to immigrants, religion and crime. Waller appears a capable historian - or at least, she cites primary sources, which isn't always the case with popular histories - but more than this, she is a very good writer, whose lively depictions and willingness to use her (acknowledged) imagination make this always a pleasure to read.

The actual interest of each section to any one reader will almost certainly depend on the subject tackled; so for example I found religion, crime and death much more interesting than fashion or food. This says more about me than it does about Waller or her book: I enjoyed this immensely. There should be more history like this.

An invaluable resource.
This is a book of rare quality, well-researched, informative, entertaining and highly readable. Whether your pleasure is interesting tid-bits to share or to gain a real insight into the realities of life in this period, I doubt you will find better.