The library is currently offering a trial subscription to the London Low Life digital collection. This full text resource brings to life the teeming streets of Victorian London. The database includes salacious ‘swell’s guides’ to London prostitution, gambling, and drinking dens, scandalous advertisements and ballads, subversive posters, and lurid serial stories from chapbooks and penny dreadfuls. This collection will be of interest to 19th century scholars researching: the underworld, working-class culture, ‘slumming’, orphanages, asylums, prisons, street literature, popular music, the Temperance Movement, and social reform. Also included is a complete run of the rare Tallis’ Street Views, a series of beautifully engraved directories depicting London, along with details of the businesses contained within each locale. These views provide invaluable insight into both the architecture and the usage of London’s buildings in the mid-19th century. Please note that PDF downloads are not available during the trial, but images may be viewed and printed. You can access this resource via the library’s Electronic Resource Trials page. We welcome any comments you have about this database. Our feedback form will take you less than 1 minute to complete. This trial will be available through April 25, 2014.
