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by Victoria Kelley (Author)
Cheap street is a lively and scholarly account of London's street markets, which were an overlooked site of urban modernity and the most vigorous outgrowth of the informal economy that flourished below and beyond the recognised institutions of the consumer city. Kelley brings together design and material culture history, urban studies and social and cultural history to analyse the street markets' distinct characteristics. These included the flaring naked flames of their naphtha lights, their impermanent yet persistent unofficial occupation of space, and the noisy performative selling that took place there. The result is a new interpretation of London's urban geographies, moving beyond the accepted view of the West End as the consumer city and the East as the city of poverty, and demonstrating that the informality of the street markets was a powerful force in shaping representations of London and its people.
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London's street markets - Petticoat Lane, Berwick Street, Lambeth Walk - are iconic locations: Cheap street tells their history, and that of the people who bought and sold there. From the 1850s anything that could be bought in a shop could also be bought in London's street markets, which were the butcher, baker, greengrocer, provision merchant, haberdasher, tailor and furnisher of the working-class city. They sat uncomfortably on the edge of the law, barely tolerated by authorities that did not quite know whether to admire them for their efficient circulation of goods, or to despise them for their unregulated and 'low' character. They were the first recourse of immigrants looking to earn a living, and of privileged observers seeking a voyeuristic glimpse of street life.
London's street markets have too often been overlooked, viewed as anomalous amongst the sophisticated consumer institutions of the modern city, the department stores and West-End shops. Cheap street shows how the street markets, as an emanation of the informal economy that flourishes in the interstices of urban life, adapted nimbly to urban growth and contributed to consumer modernity. In doing so, they propagated myths about what it meant to live in London and be a Londoner. Cheap street analyses the street markets through their legal and economic informality, material culture, sensory affects, and performative character, using rich and varied documentary and visual evidence. It reshapes the interpretation of London's urban geographies and consumer cultures, offering new insights to amateurs, students and scholars of London's history. 'Kelley lets London's street markets dazzle us, before making us think again.'Cultural and Social History
Author Biography
Victoria Kelley is Director of Research and Professor of the History of Design and Material Culture at the University for the Creative Arts
