The People of the Abyss
by Jack London · first published 1900
10mentions
5recommended by
10HN commenters
2011–2025first – last mentioned
50% recommend50% neutral
Why HN recommends it
First-hand account of Jack London living among the poor in Whitechapel, East London; recommended for a vivid picture of 1900s urban poverty and the lives of working-poor Londoners.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Book of Jack London about life in the East End of London in 1902. He wrote the experiences of living in the East End for months, staying in workhouses or sleeping on the streets. The conditions he experienced and wrote would be the same as would have supported an estimated 500,000 poor in London at the time.
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Read freeProject Gutenberg
If you want to read more about life in 1800s London, you should read The People of the Abyss by Jack London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People_of_the_Abyss It's his first-hand account of spending two living in Whitechapel, East London.
on “Liquid Bewitchment: Gin Drinking in England, 1700–1850” ↗"Down and Out in Paris and London" is one of Orwell's more overrated books. He did have lived experience of it, but the idea was basically taken from Jack London's "People of the Abyss" which is much lesser known.
on “Alpha Books” ↗Similarly, Jack London's /People of the Abyss/
on “A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)” ↗…would've been a much more pleasant place with some sort of health and safety law, restrictions on child labour or a functioning welfare system other than slave labour in the poor house. Did you read the People of the Abyss link that I posted earlier? There's some scary stuff in there: I worked at Sullivan's place in Widnes, better known as the British Alkali Chemical Works. I was working in a shed, and I had to cross the…
on “How to Make Trillions of Dollars” ↗I can't recommend People of the Abyss highly enough. Read it for free on Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1688 "The Day of Judgment! More than he want it. From all the land rises the hunger wail, from Ghetto and countryside,…
on “From Poverty to Prosperity: A conversation with Bill Gates [pdf]” ↗…a touch away is really too great to explain. I've read many, many books over the last weeks. One or two a week (last week, Jules Verne' "le testament d'un excentrique", the week before Jack London's" people of the abyss" and Verne's "la maison à vapeur"). And I still have a huge shelf of paper books to read :) Thinking of it, I probably spend most of my time reading something anyway (I read tons of magazines, blogs,…
on “52 books in 52 weeks (with data tracking)” ↗Discussions like this sometimes stagger me personally. Did Dickens write for nothing? Does everyone really wish to be Scrooge or Bounderby? Did Jack London write The People of the Abyss and waste his time? How many times must we relive that age before the lessons we learned from it at that time are permanent and inarguable?
on “Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality” ↗…when the majority of mankind has become technologically superfluous. At the same time rebellious with hunger and economically unimportant. What will then stop a final solution of the world problem? In People of the Abyss the Eastenders already saw it coming. They are, Jack London wrote, “encumbrances”, of no use to anyone, not even to themselves. “They clutter the earth with their presence and are better out of the way”."""…
on “From Poverty to Prosperity: A conversation with Bill Gates [pdf]” ↗…https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism which was what influenced Jack London's thinking (see "The Call of the Wild", "White Fang" etc.) but at the same time he was also a Socialist (see "The Iron Heel", "The People of the Abyss" etc.) See his "views" section here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_London#Views
on “The Alpha Myth: How captive wolves led us astray” ↗…the Wild and White Fang was first in the line of anarchists, authors and lost souls to shelter here. He christened it The Great Monster Doss House in his seminal work of living among the East End poor, People of the Abyss, in 1902."[1] [0]: http://eastlondonhistory.com/2011/06/16/stalin-in-londons-ea... [1]: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/oct/24/housingpolicy...
on “Thoughtcrime” ↗