(image credit: Detail of “Gin Lane“, William Hogarth)

London Low Life is a rich collection of digitized primary sources “relating to 19th and early 20th century London.” Contents include cartoons, advertisements, song sheets, street cries, interactive maps plus the full text of a selection of popular publications (including “penny dreadfuls”).  Also included is a dictionary of slang, covering everything from “academican” (which refers to either a scholar at an academy or a woman at a brothel) to “yelper” (a fellow who makes pitiful lamentations of trifles).

High quality primary resources for research in literature, cultural studies, urban studies or social history, and fun for casual perusal as well!

Selected additional Victorian resources:

• Victorian Popular Culture
  A collection of primary sources, together with interpretive essays, describing popular entertainment in America, Britain and Europe in the period from 1779 to 1930.More about Victorian England:
• Nineteenth Century Index [C19]
  Integrated access to the twelve most important finding aids for books, periodicals, official publications, newspapers and archives for 19th century studies.
• Victorian Database Online
  Over 110,000 records listing books, articles, and dissertation abstracts published from 1945 to date on every field of nineteenth-century British studies. Coverage begins with 1945.

• The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Culture. Ed. Francis O’Gorman. Cambridge; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2010. DA533 .C36 2010 (Koerner Library)
• Engels, Friedrich. The Condition of the Working Class in England. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England ; New York, N.Y., USA : Penguin Books, 1987. HD8389 .E52 1987 (Koerner Library) and online.
• Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. London : Collins, 1965. PR4561 .A1 1954 (Koerner Library) and online.
• Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn. Mary Barton. Oxford [U.K.] ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2006. PR4710 .M3 2006 (Koerner Library) and online.
• Brontë, Charlotte. Shirley. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007. PR4167 .S66 2007 (Koerner Library) and online.
• Disraeli, Benjamin. Sybil, or The Two Nations. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1980. PR4084 .S9 1895 (Koerner Library) and online.
• Hoggart, R. (1957). The uses of literacy: Aspects of working-class life. London: Chatto & Windus. DA115 .H6 (Koerner Library)
• Victorians: a journal of culture and literature. Bowling Green, KY : Western Kentucky University, 2011-. PR1 .V38 (Koerner Library) and online, 2011-
• Working-Class Women Poets in Victorian Britain. Florence Saunders Boos. Peterborough, Ont. : Broadview Press, c2008. PR595.W6 W67 2008 (Koerner Library)