HENRY MAYHEW (1812-1887) AND

practical iaquiries into studymg tbe meet-fdk's everyday We,
emsrainmeat, satire a
vernacular (Chapter 5). socio-cdtural histay " (Chpers 4 and 5), adventUte stories and travel
literature (Chapter 6) - all in om literary genre. The name I give to this gme (as others such as
Bakhtin have also done) is the Menippean satire with some qualifications about its total relevance.
In conclusion, I believe that future analysis of the city a including its cultures ami languages.
and of Marxist critical analysis of the city in particular, could be widend if scholars read London
through Maykw's Ladon Lobour. Engels was the faremaa piara in analyzing what David
Carmadhe following Engels, has called the "links between shapes on tk ground - the physical
farm which the evolving city took - and the shapes in society - the nature of the social
relationships be~reen people who lived in tk towns." zs But Mayhew was important, too. as we
shall see in this detailed examination of London Labour and the h nhn Poor. The theoretical
grounding of most twentieth-century urban studies have unckaxed the concrexe and complex
development of modern industrial countries. Ye& following Katzaelson. the tbmy of
differentiation, on which they are based, is flawed in the assumptions that the basic units of social
analysis should be the individual and society, and that the ways society and the individual relate to
" Hobsbawm, Eric, "Histay and the Dark Satanic Milk" In lnbouring Men Studies in the Hislory of
Lobour. New Yak: Basic Books, 1964 19%)- 105- 1 19. Hobhwm described three periods of the
Industrial Revolution: (1) 1780-1840, the classical age; (2) 1840-1890, capitalism's rule; (3) 1890-1939,
the age of imperialisn and mmopoly capitalism (Hobsbawm, 272).
" The practice of cultural themy aims to understand the texture of social experiences and daily life
including the material foondatioas of the production and aganizatim of power in time and space.
'' Hobsbawm wrote: "Eagels' account of Britain in 1844 and Maor's descriptions of nineteenth-century
social conditions were substantially accepted as standard9* (Ibid, 106, 116); see Marcus, Steven, "Reading
the Illegible: Some Modern Representations of Urban Experience." In Visions of the Modern City. Essays
in History, An, ond titcrarure. Edited by William Sharpe and Leonard Wallock, Baltimore: The John
Hopkins University Ress, 1987,232.
zs Cannadine. David, "Residential Differentiation in Nineteenth Century Towns: Ran Shapes on the
Ground to Shapes in Society." In James H Johnson and Colin G. Mey (eds.), The Structure of Nimteeruh
Cenrury Cities. Lardon: Croom Helm. 1982,235; Katznelsm, Ira, MamfUsm and the City. Oxfad:
Clarendoa Press, 1992,154; see Wi's "Urbenism as a Way of Life*' (1938) and Roben Park's "The City
Suggestions for the Investigatioa of Human Behaviour in he City Environment** (1915).