Victorian Shoreditch: In Search of Arthur Morrison’s ‘Jago’
Tue 22 October 2013, 6pm - 7.15pm
Please note: this event has now closed for booking.
Calvert 22 Gallery, 22 Calvert Avenue, London E2 7JP
Please note: this event has now closed for booking.
Marking the 150th birthday of celebrated East End writer Arthur Morrison, this walking tour explores the former Old Nichol slum (today Shoreditch’s Boundary Estate), and the site of his most notorious novel, A Child of the Jago (1896). Bleaker, crueller and more violent than any of Charles Dickens’ depictions of the London underclass, Morrison’s writing immediately provoked heated controversy.
Starting at Calvert 22 Gallery with a short account of Morrison’s life and work, the walking tour will move out into the nearby streets to discuss his contribution to Victorian debates about poverty and urban regeneration and to discover traces of the forgotten slum in today’s transformed urban landscape.
Dr Nadia Valman, Walk Guide
Dr Nadia Valman is senior lecturer in Victorian literature at Queen Mary, University of London, and specialises in the literature of London’s East End.
Main image credit: Charles Booth, ‘Descriptive Map of East End Poverty’ in Life and Labour of the People in London. Volume 1: East London (London: Macmillan, 1889)
