GAVARNI IN LONDON: SKETCHES OF LIFE AND CHARACTER, WITH ILLUSTRATIVE ESSAYS BY POPULAR WRITERS.

Edited by Albert R. Smith, with 23 original illustrations by Paul Gavarni,

engraved by Henry Vizetelly.

Originally published 1849.

This edition edited, with annotations and an introductory essay by Stephen Banks.

Lambertville, NJ: The True Bill Press. 248 p.

ISBN-10: 0-9791116-4-1

ISBN-13: 978-0-9791116-4-8

Published July 2009 in hard cover at a price of $45.00

 

     This collection of twenty-three essays, each accompanied by an illustration by the French artist Paul Gavarni, provides a unique perspective on public life in London in the 1840s. As the editor of this edition points out in his introduction, this period reflects an early Victorian society which had not yet fully abandoned Georgian excesses for the sensibilities of a rather later age. The essays therefore document contemporary perceptions of an urban society in transition to a modern form.