Includes bibliographical references (pages 479-499) and index.

pt. 1. The city wakes -- 1810 : The Berners Street hoax -- Early to rise -- On the road -- Travelling (mostly) hopefully -- In and out of London -- pt. 2. Staying alive -- 1861 : The Tooley Street fire -- The world's market -- Selling the streets -- Slumming -- The waters of death -- pt. 3. Enjoying life -- 1867 : The Regent's Park skating disaster -- Street performance -- Leisure for all -- Feeding the streets -- Street theatre -- pt. 4. Sleeping and awake -- 1852 : The funeral of the Duke of Wellington -- Night entertainment -- Street violence -- The red-lit streets to death.

For much of the century, London's greatest contemporary observer, Charles Dickens, obsessively walked its streets, recording its pleasures and vices, curiosities and cruelties. In his company, the author leads us through the markets, sewers, rivers, slums, cemeteries, gin palaces and chop-houses of the Victorian capital, revealing the city in all its variety, vibrancy, and squalor. From the cacophonous cries of street-sellers to the uncomfortable reality of travel by omnibus, from the many uses of a dead horse to the unimaginably grueling working lives of hawker children, no detail is too small, or too strange. No one who reads this book will view London in the same light again.