By Christine L. Corton

In well known mind's eye, London is a urban of fog. The vintage London fogs, the thick yellow “pea-soupers,” have been born within the commercial age of the early 19th century. the 1st globally infamous example of pollution, they remained a continuing function of chilly, windless iciness days till fresh air laws within the Nineteen Sixties led to their dying. Christine L. Corton tells the tale of those epic London fogs, their hazards and wonder, and their lasting results on our tradition and imagination.

As town grew, smoke from thousands of family fires, mixed with commercial emissions and of course taking place mists, seeped into houses, retailers, and public constructions in darkish yellow clouds of water droplets, soot, and sulphur dioxide. The fogs have been occasionally so thick that folks couldn't see their very own toes. by the point London’s fogs lifted within the moment 1/2 the 20th century, they'd replaced city existence. Fogs had created worlds of anonymity that formed social kin, offering a canopy for crime, and blurring ethical and social obstacles. they'd been a present to writers, showing famously within the works of Charles Dickens, Henry James, Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, and T. S. Eliot. Whistler and Monet painted London fogs with a fascination different artists reserved for the transparent gentle of the Mediterranean.

Corton combines ancient and literary sensitivity with a watch for visible drama―generously illustrated here―to show London fog as one of many nice city spectacles of the commercial age.

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Extra resources for London Fog: The Biography

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The political constellation that had so frustrated reformers such as Taylor, Pegge, and Frend began to change in the 1830s and 1840s. Reform was on the agenda. During the early Victorian period, not least as a consequence of the cholera epidemic of 1832 and even more of a second epidemic in 1849, a “sanitary revolution” got under way, with social reformers and medical men arguing with ever-greater insistence that Britain’s industrial towns and cities urgently required a massive cleanup. Just as the sanitary revolution cleaned up houses and streets, with 30 .

The smoky atmosphere of earlier periods, it must pose a danger to health and in particular to the lungs, especially of those who were already vulnerable, such as the very young or very old, asthmatics, or bronchitics. Towards the end of the century observers began to note a link between a sudden increase of deaths and the occurrence of foggy weather, just as writers such as John Graunt and Thomas Tryon had linked smoke 22 . london fog pollution with health problems in an earlier era. Yet many writers surprisingly commented not on the danger of fog but on its reassuringly nutritional quality.

Reproduced by kind permission of Punch © Punch Limited. the smoky atmosphere of earlier periods, it must pose a danger to health and in particular to the lungs, especially of those who were already vulnerable, such as the very young or very old, asthmatics, or bronchitics. Towards the end of the century observers began to note a link between a sudden increase of deaths and the occurrence of foggy weather, just as writers such as John Graunt and Thomas Tryon had linked smoke 22 . london fog pollution with health problems in an earlier era.

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