Dr. Johnson's London
Liza Picard
362 pages with notes and index
published in 2000

A fitting companion to Roy Porters book on the English Enlightenment, this depicts the everyday life of Londoners of roughly the same period. It was pure coincidence though that I read both books so soon after each other. It's interesting to see both authors using some of the same techniques to bring the era to life. Both make extensive use of contemporary reports and writers, though Liza Picard quotes from fewer, mainly chosing from a handful of favourites: Boswell, Dr. Johnson of course and the French visitor m. Grosley are the three most cited. Other reports are used as source material, but not quoted from as much.

I have to say I found the book difficult to get into, mainly because the first six chapters were a bit on the dull side, dealing with how London the city looked like during the period. It may be fasciniating in its own right, those facts and figures and descriptions of the streets, buildings and parks but when reading on the metro back from work it tended to make me doze.

Fortunately, the other three parts are more interesting, chapter 7 to 15 dealing with the poor, chapter 16 to 23 dealing with "the middling sort" and the last two chapters handling the rich and the king. Every chapter then takes as its subject a different facet of life in London, where a chapter in the section on London's poor is sometimes mirrored in the section about the "middling sort". Hence you get chapter 11 "the sick poor" mirroring chapter 16 "dentistry, health and medical care". In general though the themes are not as much repeated as built upon in the various parts.

I quite enjoyed this book once I got through the first part. It's comprehensive and Picard has a knack of sticking to the main story while regularly focusing on some telling detail illuminating the subject. Recommended.