Here are 87 books that Lost London fans have personally recommended if you like
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Fiona Rule is a writer, researcher, and historian specialising in the history of London.
She is the author of five books: The Worst Street In London, London's Docklands, London's Labyrinth, Streets Of Sin, and The Oldest House In London.
A regular contributor to television and radio programmes, Fiona also has her own company, House Histories, which specialises in researching the history of people's homes. She holds an Advanced Diploma in Local History from the University of Oxford.
In a series of interviews, Arthur Harding tells us of his life as an East End rogue at the turn of the century. The characters he encountered are a “Who’s Who” of the underworld at that time and his descriptions of Spitalfields were very useful to me during research for The Worst Street In London.
First published in 1981, this book examines the life of Arthur Harding, a well-known figure in the East End underworld during the first half of the twentieth century. The first five chapters survey his life in the 'Jago' slum between 1887 and 1896, offering a different view of an often vilified district. The subsequent phases of his life as a cabinet-maker, street trader and wardrobe dealer reflect the changing fortunes of the East End from hand-to-mouth conditions in the late-nineteenth century to comparative security in the 1930s.
The reader is introduced to some of the major features of East End…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I’ve been obsessed with London since childhood. The English side of my family lived and worked throughout the city, and a day out with my father walking its streets was my greatest treat. He was a doctor, so a London trip could involve shopping for medical equipment, trawling bookshops, an afternoon at his tailor, or pub crawls where he seemed to know everyone. I’ve always been aware of the eccentricity of the place, which still thrills me. I really struggled to choose these books because there’s just so much material that I had to leave out. But I hope what I’ve chosen might be of interest.
Henry Mayhew’s sprawling record of nineteenth-century London can be overwhelming, but his ear for the vernacular and eye for weird detail means that the reader can dip in and find something.
London’s population exploded in the nineteenth century, bulked out by a huge number of itinerant workers. Mayhew interviews these people–in the prologue to the first volume, he describes himself as a "traveller in the undiscovered country of the poor"–and because he gives no judgment on their lives, the book feels more like a modern documentary.
The voices are one thing; Mayhew’s statistics are another–"expenditure in ham sandwiches supplied by street sellers is £1,820 yearly…a consumption of 436,800 sandwiches." Anyone who thinks that Dickens’ writes grotesques should read this. The first book that really brought old London alive for me.
London Labour and the London Poor is a masterpiece of personal inquiry and social observation. It is the classic account of life below the margins in the greatest Metropolis in the world and a compelling portrait of the habits, tastes, amusements, appearance, speech, humour, earnings and opinions of the labouring poor at the time of the Great Exhibition.
In scope, depth and detail it remains unrivalled. Mayhew takes us into the abyss, into a world without fixed employment where skills are declining and insecurity mounting, a world of criminality, pauperism and vice,…
Fiona Rule is a writer, researcher, and historian specialising in the history of London.
She is the author of five books: The Worst Street In London, London's Docklands, London's Labyrinth, Streets Of Sin, and The Oldest House In London.
A regular contributor to television and radio programmes, Fiona also has her own company, House Histories, which specialises in researching the history of people's homes. She holds an Advanced Diploma in Local History from the University of Oxford.
Not a book as such, but these maps tell the social historian a great deal about London in the late-1800s. They were compiled by Charles Booth, a wealthy philanthropist, who wanted to highlight the areas of London in the greatest need of help. In order to achieve this, he despatched a team of researchers to every street in London (except the City,) to assess their character. The results were entered onto a colour-coded map – yellow streets were the most affluent; black were the resorts of “vicious semi-criminals”.
A splendid - and necessary - publication...a great resource Iain Sinclair
Charles Booth's landmark survey of life in late-19th-century London, published for the first time in one volume.
In the late nineteenth century, Charles Booth's landmark social and economic survey found that 35 percent of Londoners were living in abject poverty. Booth's team of social investigators interviewed Londoners from all walks of life, recording their comments, together with their own unrestrained remarks and statistical information, in 450 notebooks. Their findings formed the basis of Booth's colour-coded social mapping (from vicious and semi-criminal to wealthy) and his seventeen-volume survey Inquiry into…
The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.
Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…
Fiona Rule is a writer, researcher, and historian specialising in the history of London.
She is the author of five books: The Worst Street In London, London's Docklands, London's Labyrinth, Streets Of Sin, and The Oldest House In London.
A regular contributor to television and radio programmes, Fiona also has her own company, House Histories, which specialises in researching the history of people's homes. She holds an Advanced Diploma in Local History from the University of Oxford.
This facsimile of the original A-Z shows London before huge swathes of the city were destroyed by enemy bombing in the Second World War. It is invaluable when searching for old addresses and presents a picture of areas that had not changed much since Victorian times but would soon be altered beyond recognition.
As a facsimile reproduction of the A to Z London Street Atlas, circa 1938/39, this publication shows street mapping of London as it was before the Second World War bombing and the redevelopments that followed and may be of assistance in tracing family history for that period.
The coverage extends from central London to Edgware, Whetstone, Palmers Green, Edmonton, Walthamstow, Snaresbrook, Seven Kings, Barking, Silvertown, Plumstead, Kidbrooke, Bellingham, South Sydenham, Croydon, Streatham Common, Morden, Wimbledon Common, Twickenham, Richmond, Kew, Hanwell, Ealing Broadway, Wembley, Harrow and Wealdstone. Included within the atlas is a map of the Underground Railways of London…
I have been fascinated by historical fiction since childhood, when I used to read historical stories for children by such writers as Rosemary Sutcliffe and Henry Treece, moving on to Dickens and Austen in my early teens. Many of the great books about girls growing up were written in the Victorian and Edwardian periods by e.g. Louisa M Alcott, L M Montgomery, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. I devoured all these since they seemed to take me into a different world. I am a fiction writer rather than a historian since it is the great stories offered by history that spark my passion!
This is one novel that I can truly say kept me up all night until I’d finished all 548 pages, despite a headache and sore eyes!
A thrilling tale of deception, betrayal, and ingenuity by one of my all-time favourite writers, Fingersmith tells the story of two women from very different social classes. One is a young thief, the other from an aristocratic family, a secretary to her corrupt uncle.
In the course of the novel, their intertwined history is exposed, along with the conspiracy to steal Maud’s fortune. There are vivid, Dickensian scenes of Victorian London and Gothic elements to the romance, but I especially admire the multiple, breathtaking plot twists. I wish I’d written it!
“Oliver Twist with a twist…Waters spins an absorbing tale that withholds as much as it discloses. A pulsating story.”—The New York Times Book Review
Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.
One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man,…
I’m fascinated by the Victorians – and I’ve spent most of my career trying to understand them – because they’re so like us and so unlike us in many ways. They’re familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. I’m a historian of science, and I’m passionate about trying to understand why we think about the world – and about science – the way we do. I think it started with the Victorians, so understanding them really matters and getting it right rather than repeating the same old stories. I hope these books will help you put the Victorians in their place the way they helped me.
I think this is just such a fantastic book. It blows away the whole idea that the Victorians were prudes, embarrassed about anything to do with sex. If you really don’t want to know what your great great grandparents got up to in the bedroom, then stay away from this book.
I really like the way Fern Riddell tells her story, too. Each chapter has a different fictional character to take you though the story. I think its really original – and you’ll never think about the Victorians the same way again.
An exciting factual romp through sexual desire, practises and deviance in the Victorian era. The Victorian Guide to Sex will reveal advice and ideas on sexuality from the Victorian period. Drawing on both satirical and real life events from the period, it explores every facet of sexuality that the Victorians encountered. Reproducing original advertisements and letters, with extracts taken from memoirs, legal cases, newspaper advice columns, and collections held in the Museum of London and the British Museum, this book lifts the veil from historical sexual attitudes.
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
I grew up in Edinburgh, an amazingly atmospheric city riddled with tales of murder, mayhem, and spooky happenings. As a child, I spent many hours wandering around the closes, alleys, and graveyards. When at University, my Master's Thesis was on the influence of City Improvement on Crime in Victorian Dundee. The subject reawakened my interest in the subject and led directly to me writing a series of nonfiction Victorian crime books. These books led to me writing the Detective Watters fictional series, based mainly in Dundee.
I loved this book, which presented a suspect for the Jack the Ripper murders with a first-person approach that puts the reader inside the Ripper’s mind. I must admit I had never considered Dr Cream as a serious contender until I read this book, but Griffith-Jones removes all doubt with her immaculately researched account. I do like the amount of genuine research the author has put into writing her book.
I liked the atmosphere–vital in any historical novel–and the small details that always add to the feeling.
Griffith-Jones introduced us to the underbelly of Victorian London through Cream’s eyes in a delicious manner. One felt as if one was there: I loved that.
I left my hometown of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, at age 18 to attend university in Manhattan, where I started my career in journalism and the media. Since then, I’ve lived in Berlin, Germany; Hong Kong; and now Copenhagen, Denmark, generally moving to advance my career and explore new worlds. Whenever you move to a new place and establish yourself in a new culture, there’s always a learning curve. Helping other women (and men!) adapt to their new environment is why I started the “How to Live in Denmark” podcast, which has now been running for more than 10 years.
One of the reasons I like this book is because the author is a man writing about a woman’s inner thoughts and, unusually, doing a very good job.
The time and place: London, the 1890s. Single women are known as “the odd women,” the leftovers. Dr. Rhoda Nunn starts a school to train these women in secretarial skills (back then, most secretaries were men) so that they won’t be dependent on relatives or forced into unhappy marriages. Rhoda herself is proudly unmarried and independent – until she meets an absolutely wonderful man. Will she give up her advocacy for “odd women” and marry the man she loves?
(Warning: this book is out of copyright, so shoddy rip-offs are being sold on Amazon. Make sure you get a legit copy.)
`there are half a million more women than men in this unhappy country of ours . . . So many odd women - no making a pair with them.'
The idea of the superfluity of unmarried women was one the `New Woman' novels of the 1890s sought to challenge. But in The Odd Women (1893) Gissing satirizes the prevailing literary image of the `New Woman' and makes the point that unmarried women were generally viewed less as noble and romantic figures than as `odd' and marginal in relation to the ideal of womanhood itself. Set in grimy, fog-ridden London, these…
Back in the dark ages, before the internet and cell phones, the most common form of off-duty soldiers’ entertainment was reading. I read pretty much anything I could get my hands on, but I was always most excited to read fantasy and science fiction. If a book has a wild new world, magic, or tech, I’m in and usually can’t get enough. I remain a cross-genre reader to this day, but fantasy and science fiction always feel like home. Bonus points for dragons.
Listed as a ‘gas lamp’ fantasy, and me being a pre-Victorian/Victorian era London fan, I had to grab this one. It had a fresh twist on the mad scientist’s experiment went wrong, creating a superhero and a supervillain. I found that exciting. I loved how the main character (the hero) struggled to learn his abilities and limitations, all the while not knowing who the villain was or what he was up to. I enjoyed this master class on how to put your main character through the wringer. And the twist ending surprised me. Great stuff.
In this heroic gaslamp fantasy, superhuman abilities bring an adventurous new dimension to 1820 London, where an outlaw speedster and a master of illusion do battle to decide who will own the city.
Think being a superhero is hard? Try being the first one.
Will’s life is a proper muddle—and all because he was “accidentally” inflicted with the ability to run faster and leap higher than any human ever. One minute he’s a blacksmith’s apprentice trying to save his master from debtor’s prison. The next he’s accused of murder and hunted as a black-hearted highwayman.
At five years old, Kasiel was found with the pointed ends of his ears cut off. Despite that brutal start, he’s lived twelve peaceful years with the man who took him in. Keeping his hair long over his mutilated ears helps him hide the fact that he is Vanrian, a…
I’ve loved Gothic fiction since I was a teen, though back then, I didn’t know it was Gothic. I just liked the creepiness, the often-isolated heroine, and the things-aren’t-what-they-seem murkiness of the stories. One of my first reads was Jane Eyre, which has remained a favorite. Though I didn’t like history in school (too much memorization!), I read several historical fiction books from different eras that fascinated me. These things, combined with another genre favorite—mystery/thriller, led to my first book. It turns out that all those things I’d gravitated to in my decades of reading became the things I most wanted to write about - mystery/thriller historical fiction with elements of Gothic.
Nobody does characters like Jess Kidd. Every person in this story is bizarre—a monster, misfit, or malefactor—yet not one feels contrived. I adored Bridie Devine, a small, rotund, pipe-smoking detective who begins to see the same ghost everywhere she goes.
Bridie’s quarry is a strange girl who’s been kidnapped and might (depending on who you ask) have supernatural powers or be a “lovely grotesque” who’s caught the eye of collectors. I fell in love with Kidd’s imaginative Victorian London, where nothing is as it seems, and evil lurks around every bend.
London, 1863. Bridie Devine, the finest female detective of her age, is taking on her toughest case yet. Reeling from her last job and with her reputation in tatters, a remarkable puzzle has come her way. Christabel Berwick has been kidnapped. But Christabel is no ordinary child. She is not supposed to exist.
As Bridie fights to recover the stolen child she enters a world of fanatical anatomists, crooked surgeons and mercenary showmen. Anomalies are in fashion, curiosities are the thing, and fortunes are won and lost in the name of entertainment. The public love a spectacle and Christabel may…
