Cheap Street

Victoria Kelley is Director of Research and Professor of the History of Design and Material Culture at the University for the Creative Arts

• Introduction 1. What is a street market?2. Things 3. Streets 4. People 5. Street markets, informality and the performance of London ConclusionSelect bibliographyIndex

'Throughout, Kelley evokes the vibrancy and spectacle of the street markets. The chapter on ‘Streets’ is a highlight, due no doubt to her expertise in the history of design and material culture. ... These stories do not just stick in the mind. London’s irregular markets were full of delight and stimulation, but at the same time complicated categories and norms of metropolitan society. Kelley lets London’s street markets dazzle us, before making us think again.'Charlie Taverner, Cultural and Social History'A well-written and richly illustrated book on London street markets, Victoria Kelley challenges conventional narratives of Victorian street markets as imaginative and material relics of the past.' Judith Walkowitz, Victorian Studies'Kelley’s hugely entertaining treatment of the market culture of the East End provides an important contribution to the literature surrounding the area and the cultures of poverty and subsistence that underpinned the “informal” economy of the poor ... There is a breadth of scope and an adventurousness of interpretive method here that gives Kelley’s study a refreshingly different take on some traditional themes.' Antony Taylor, Left History