Jack London
John Griffith London (; January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors t ...
, containing his first-hand account of several weeks spent living in the
Whitechapel
Whitechapel () is an area in London, England, and is located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is in east London and part of the East End of London, East End. It is the location of Tower Hamlets Town Hall and therefore the borough tow ...
district of the East End of London in 1902. London attempted to understand the working-class of this deprived area of the city, sleeping in
workhouse
In Britain and Ireland, a workhouse (, lit. "poor-house") was a total institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. In Scotland, they were usually known as Scottish poorhouse, poorh ...
s or on the streets, and staying as a lodger with a poor family. The conditions he experienced and wrote about were the same as those endured by an estimated 500,000 of the contemporary London poor.
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels" ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.Jacob Riis's sensational '' How the Other Half Lives'' (1890), which had documented life in the slums of
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
in the 1880s.
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to a ...
was inspired by ''The People of the Abyss'', which he had read in his teens. In the 1930s, he began disguising himself as a derelict and made tramping expeditions into the poor section of London. The influence of ''The People of the Abyss'' can be seen in '' Down and Out in Paris and London'' and '' The Road to Wigan Pier''.
Reviewing the book for the ''
Daily Express
The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first ...
'', journalist and editor
Bertram Fletcher Robinson
Bertram Fletcher Robinson (22 August 1870 – 21 January 1907) was an English sportsperson, sportsman, journalist, editor, author and Liberal Unionist Party activist. During his life-time, he wrote at least three hundred items, including a ser ...
wrote that it would be "difficult to find a more depressing volume".
Phraseology
When London wrote the book, the phrase "the Abyss", with its connotation of
Hell
In religion and folklore, hell is a location or state in the afterlife in which souls are subjected to punishment after death. Religions with a linear divine history sometimes depict hells as eternal destinations, such as Christianity and I ...
, was in wide use to refer to the life of the urban poor. It featured in
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer, prolific in many genres. He wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, hist ...
's popular 1901 book '' Anticipations'' multiple times, along with the phrase "the People of the Abyss", which he would use again in Chapter 3 of '' Mankind in the Making'' (1903). In 1907 London used the expression "the people of the abyss" in '' The Iron Heel'', a work of
dystopia
A dystopia (lit. "bad place") is an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives. It is an imagined place (possibly state) in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmen ...
n
science fiction
Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...
set in the United States.Theodore Dalrymple, "The Dystopian Imagination," in ''Our Culture, What's Left of It'' (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005)}, p. 106.
Bibliography
* Rees, Rosemary; Shephard, Colin, "OCR British Depth Study 1906-1918: British Society in Change", London : Hodder Murray, Jan 23, 2002, Reference - Page 10 Source 4
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
series about a modern recreation of a slum tenement and its inhabitants in the East End of London