Slum orientations: race, confinement, and cartography in The Nether World

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Notes

1 Henry Morton Stanley published In Darkest Africa (1890) shortly before Booth wrote and published In Darkest England. For a reading of Booth’s use of the “urban jungle” trope and its relation to Stanley’s text, see McLaughlin (2000, 79–103).

2 See, for example, Mayhew who called the poor the “‘Sonquas’ and the ‘Fingoes’ of this country” (1864, 4), Booth who compared slum dwellers to “barbarians” and “pygmies” (1890, 11), and Smith who described East London as a place of racial mixture (1889, 543). For the figuration of the London poor as heathens, see Wohl (1977, 45–72). While Wohl connects this figuration to ideas about empire and the civilizing mission, he does not consider its associations with race. For the racial contours of the term “heathen,” see Lum (2022).

3 Wohl estimates that 77,000 people were displaced due to various urban renewal plans in late-nineteenth-century London (1977, 26), though some Victorians put that number at one million (29).

4 For a history of the Ordnance Survey, see Hewitt (2011).

5 While critics tend to assume Gissing’s readers were middle class, DeVine complicates this assumption and questions if Gissing wrote with a middle-class audience in mind at all (2005, 23–27).

6 For more on slumming, urban tourism, and urban exploration in the nineteenth century, see Walkowitz (1992); McLaughlin (2000); Joyce (2003, 190–205); and Koven (2004).

7 Other critics who have also suggested that Gissing’s novel either functions as a map or compels readers to consult one include Gill (2008, 393n2); Irwin (2006, 30–31); and Hertel (2004, 13).

8 For the suburbs as a solution to urban overcrowding, see Yelling (1986, 51–71).

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Notes on contributors

Sophia Hsu

Sophia Hsu is an Assistant Professor of English at Lehman College, CUNY. She is currently completing her first monograph, which examines race and population in the Victorian novel. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Victorian Studies, Victorian Literature and Culture, SEL, Dickens Studies Annual, and Victorian Review. She is also a founding developer of the digital humanities project Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom.