This is the story of the women, men, boys, and girls who hawked oysters, cherries, cabbages, and pies on London's streets, feeding the capital throughout its transformation from medieval city to global metropolis. Street Food reconstructs the working lives of these poor traders, following them from the back alleys and cramped rooms they called home, to the taverns, bridges, and corners where they set up shop. It describes fast-moving food chains, heaving markets, rumbling wheelbarrows, scruffy donkeys, rushing traffic, and advertising cries that echoed through the city. The first long-term, comprehensive history of street selling in London, the book explores the intricacies of hawkers' work and their profound social, economic, and cultural importance to metropolitan life between the late sixteenth and early twentieth centuries. Based on the largest collection of archival and published evidence to date, it not only highlights the crucial roles street sellers played in fuelling the capital's expansion, but argues that their endurance over three centuries raises challenging questions about major narratives and processes of urban history, like modernization, the rise of retail, and the improvement of the streets. And it examines why the street food of the past-like the continuing vitality of street vendors around the world - is so different to the fashionable street food ubiquitous across London today.
Charlie Taverner is a social historian of food and cities. After receiving a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London, he held an Economic History Society postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research. He is currently a research fellow on the ERC-funded FoodCult project, based at Trinity College Dublin. His research has appeared in journals such as History Workshop and Urban History. Previously, Charlie worked as a business and agricultural journalist, starting out on the staff of the magazine Farmers Weekly.
Title: Street Food: Hawkers and the History of London
Author: Taverner, Charlie
ISBN: 9780192846945
Binding:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication Date: 2023-01-12
Number of Pages: 256
Weight: 0.5502 kg
a tasty tour of how we used to eat... richly researched * Bee Wilson, The Sunday Times *
an immensely vivid portrayal of a forgotten London, and a tribute to the hard lives and admirable independence and resilience of Londoners past. * Christopher Hart, Daily Mail *
Accessible and enjoyable... makes for vibrant, engaging reading. It is a world reconstructed with real humanity and warmth For anyone interested in the economics of food or the capitals history, this is a fascinating book. * Olivia Potts, The Spectator *
engaging...a comprehensive narrative, debunking stereotypes and detailing everything from the tools of the hawkers' trade... to the famous cries of the street. * Charles Wright, OnLondon *