The Edge of the Crowd

Item: The Edge of the Crowd
Author: WhichBook

Ross Gilfillan

This book uses a mystery and a new invention to focus on the texture of life in Victorian London. The invention and early uses of the camera give us a view of the energy, poverty and humanity that readers of Dickens will recognise. There are one or two really horrifying scenes that are quite hard to take, as this fast, pacy meaty story rushes you through at a gallop.

Extract

The crowds on foot funnelled on to the bridge, feeding themselves into the gaping jaws of the city .... Hilditch closed his eyes and breathed in the city, the focus of his study, with its street upon street bursting with a swollen population, a hundred thousand faces, legs moving, arms swinging, and above and below the tramping workers, the old and infirm, the day sleeping prositiutes and crib-breaking cracksmen, the wild spirits lamed by gin and opium, the malingerers and the malcontents.

Parallels