HENRY MAYHEW (1812-1887) AND

London Labour, as if they were there, so to speak The "maMiterate debate" examirwl in Chapter
5 discussed Mayhew's loveaffair with tk vernacular oral tradition. Mayhw's obsession with
recording their memmies firsthand - and f a tk first time - became om of the mom sensitive
indicators of Victaian culture. and his approach to language became one of nirrRetmh-century
England's mo6t impataat rehtatioos of eighteenth-cencury thinLing about languages. Yet. in
spite of a resurgence of imerest in coatempaary aal histay, Mayfiew's hn&n Labour has
suffered from a long-term decline in prestige. The decline in oral history's status, in philclsoQhica1
thdcing as well as the use of tbe grotesque were thre main teasoas I account fa here fa
Mayhew's hmdiate loss of constituency ard eventual lack of dirm sucesms. By 186 1,
statisticians and economists recud that the belief in philosophic truth 'has coded off to such an
extent that neither the public mx the academies any long= like to receive a welcome wuks of
this kind, except as products of pure schdarship a historical curiosity." Crucially. in terms of
the camivaYgrotesque, interest in London &&our waaed as London Luhur was eventually listed
only among the comic genes a was interpreted by readers as a peculiar f m of satire targeed
at its readers, which it still is today.
Reading Victorian London: Henry Mayhew (1812-1887) and London Lubour and the bndon
Poor (1 86 1-62) has examirwi werd interrelated problems coacerniag the cultural-historical
context of Victorian London Reading Victoritan London: can also be uxkstcmd as a study of
media history, that is the history of communication. Mayhew's 'cyclopaedia' combined
philosophical discussion, travel documentary, the fantastic, and novelistic prow, all in one literary
genre that I name the Menippean satire as an example of this genre. Mayhew used "a loosely-
and it gets heavy with dirt, and we haul it up to the top and unroll it again and tasten it again; then we fix
the sides up, with shutters about six feet square, whicb you see cn the top of the travelling parade-carriages.
We fixes up the theatre and the seats we take with us"' (Mayhew, IKI: 204).
' Hobsbawm 1975,251.
Bakhtin, 1968,46.