In 1851, the journalist Henry Mayhew published London Labour and the London Poor, a groundbreaking and influential survey of London's working classes and criminal underbelly. What is particularly striking about the work are the lengthy quotations describing their lives from the people themselves. The result is a poignant and sometimes humorous portrait of Victorian London's …
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Foot binding in imperial China
There are many legends about the possible origin of foot binding. One story relates that during the Shang Dynasty (c.1600-c.1046 BC), the concubine Daji, who was said to have clubfoot, asked the Emperor to make foot binding mandatory for all girls so that her own feet would be the standard of beauty and elegance. Another …
“Teaching marble to lie”: Remembering the dead in early modern monuments
"For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten". Ecclesiastes 9:5 How will we be remembered we die? Will we be remembered at all? These are questions which occupied minds in early modern England just as …
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