This short book looks at the reality of the London that Dickens grew up and wrote in, against the background of vast economic and social change and disruption, the mass migration from the countryside to the towns, the decline and fall of the yeoman class at the hands of capitalists and the coming of the railways. There are a fair number of photos, including interesting curiosities such as the blacking warehouse by Hungerford Stairs where Dickens was sent to work at the age of 10 (though the photo must have been taken later); however, a number of the photos are oddly captioned with quotes from the novels, and it would be interesting to know the context of the actual photos themselves of ragged children, etc. The very close and intimate relationship between the novels and the author's own life experiences become very evident here. The extracts from the novels are often far longer than necessary to make the author's point and rather give the impression of padding something that is basically an extended essay into book length. Worth a look, though. ( )