Description
Book SynopsisCleansing the City: Sanitary Geographies in Victorian Londonexplores not only the challenges faced by reformers as they strove toclean up an increasingly filthy city but the resistance to their efforts.Beginning
Trade Review“Professor Allen is to be congratulated on rescuing those who had a pessimistic view of reform, or who opposed it in principle, from obscurity or the facile dismissal of scholars. She investigates what is clearly a powerful and recurring undercurrent in Victorian thought and elevates it into the mainstream.”
“It is a useful corrective...to be shown that the path of reform was strewn at every bend with those who saw themselves as losers in a process of unwelcome change.” * Times Literary Supplement *
“Cleansing the City has much to offer students of social history, urban planning, environmentalism, and literature....(A) most valuable study.” * The Victorian Web *
“What Allen’s book contributes to this already-established field of literature is an expansive drawing-together of a rich variety of source material previously unconnected.” * Technology and Culture *
“Allen’s book...is committed to supplementing the textual and discursive study of Victorian sanitary reform with a grittier and more detailed analysis of urban space and the human experience of that space.” * Victorian Studies *