Henry Mayhew

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Henry Mayhew (1861)

Henry Mayhew (born November 25, 1812 , † July 25, 1887 ) was an English social researcher, journalist and playwright. He was committed to social reform.

Mayhew co-founded the satirical magazine Punch with Mark Lemon . He is better known for his publications of extensive, including statistical, studies on the situation of the lower social classes , the working class , the ragged proletariat and the artisanal petty bourgeoisie , all of whom lived in poverty in London . Mayhew depicts the poor in a way that was unusually respectful for his time, even though he falls into the typical derogatory rhetoric of the Victorian bourgeoisie .

Publication history of Mayhews poverty reports

Mayhew wrote his first poverty reports as a series of articles for the Morning Chronicle (October 1849 to December 1850). After a dispute with the publisher, however, he left the newspaper, went into business for himself and began his famous slum reportage London Labor and the London Poor . Initially (December 1850 to February 1852) it appeared in the form of inexpensive quarto notebooks that could be bought for two or three pence on the streets or in bookshops. Around ten years later (1861) there was a new edition in book form.

Response of the poor of London to London Labor and the London Poor

Some of the lower classes disapproved of the way Mayhew described them in his report. A group of street vendors banded together against the journalist in the spring / summer of 1851 and formed a Street Trader's Protection Association.

Publications

  • London Labor and the London Poor. 1851
  • The Mormons, or Latter-day Saints. 1851
  • The Rhine and its Picturesque Scenery. 1859
  • The lower Rhine and its picturesque scenery: Rotterdam to Mayence. Routledge, Warne & Routledge, London 1860 ( digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf )
  • The Upper Rhine: Mayence to the Lake of Constance. Routledge, Warne & Routledge, London 1860 ( digitized edition )
  • German life and Manners as Seen in Saxony at the Present Day: with an account of village life, town life, fashionable life, domestic life, married life, school and university life, etc., of Germany at the present time; illustrated with songs and pictures of the student customs at the University of Jena. 1864
  • The poor of London: a compendium of the living conditions and incomes of those who want to work, those who cannot work and those who do not want to work , selected and with an afterword by Kurt Tetzeli from Rosador . With an essay by WH Auden , Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn 1996, ISBN 978-3-8218-4137-3 , series Die Other Bibliothek
Collections
  • Anne Humpherys (Ed.): Voices of the Poor. Selections from the “Morning Chronicle” “Labor and the Poor” (1849-1850). London 1971.
  • Bertrand Taithe: The Essential Mayhew. Representing and Communicating the Poor. Rivers Oram Press, London 1996.
  • EP Thompson (Ed.): The Unknown Mayhew. Selections from the Morning Chronicle 1849-50. Harmondsworth et al. 1984.

Other sources

  • Edmund Yates: His Recollections and Experiences. Richard Bentley and Son, London 1884.

literature

  • Anne Humpherys: Henry Mayhew , Boston / Mass. 1984.
  • Anne Humpherys: Travels into the Poor Man's Country. The Work of Henry Mayhew , Athens / Georgia 1977.
  • Bernhard Kleeberg: Determine nomads: Henry Mayhews knowledge practices. In: Uwe Wirth (Ed.): Bewegen im Zwischenraum, Berlin 2012, pp. 113–134.
  • Rolf Lindner (Ed.): The civilization of the urban nomads , Berlin a. a. 2005.
  • Rolf Lindner: Walks on The Wild Side. A history of urban research , Frankfurt a. M. - New York 2004.
  • Ole Münch: Henry Mayhew and the Street Vendors of Victorian London: A Cultural Exchange with Social Consequences. In: WerkstattGeschichte 22 (2013) H. 63, pp. 83–99 ( pdf ).
  • Edward P. Thompson: The Political Education of Henry Mayhew , in: Victorian Studies 11 (1967) H. 1, pp. 41-62.
  • Andrew Tolson: Social Surveillance and Subjectification: The Emergence of “Subculture” in the Work of Henry Mayhew , in: Cultural Studies 4 (1990) H. 2, pp. 113-127.
  • Deborah Vlock: Mayhew, Henry (1812-1887). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, London 2004.

Web links

Remarks

  1. See Lindner 2004, p. 16.
  2. See Münch 2013.