Books with title The People of Africa

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - The experiences related in this volume fell to me in the summer of 1902. I went down into the under-world of London with an attitude of mind which I may best liken to that of the explorer. I was open to be convinced by the evidence of my eyes, rather than by the teachings of those who had not seen, or by the words of those who had seen and gone before. Further, I took with me certain simple criteria with which to measure the life of the under-world. That which made for more life, for physical and spiritual health, was good; that which made for less life, which hurt, and dwarfed, and distorted life, was bad.

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

The People of the Abyss by Jack London - The People of the Abyss (1903) is a book by Jack London about life in the East End of London in 1902. He wrote this first-hand account by living in the East End (including the Whitechapel District) for several months, sometimes staying in workhouses or sleeping on the streets. The conditions he experienced and wrote about were the same as those endured by an estimated 500,000 of the contemporary London poor. There had been several previous accounts of slum conditions in England, most notably The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 by Friedrich Engels. However, most of these were based on secondhand sources. Jack London's account, however, was based on the firsthand experience of a very successful writer, and his account proved to be more popular. Jacob Riis's sensational How the Other Half Lives (1890) has been suggested as a source of inspiration for The People of the Abyss. A contemporary advertisement for Jack London's book said that it "tingles" with the "directness only possible from a man who knows London as Jacob Riis knows New York," suggesting that his publisher, at least, perceived a resemblance.

Near Fine. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1903. First Edition [BAL 11877], Sisson & Martens p. 15. Signed and inscribed by Becky London to her friend Mark Zamen. Photographically illustrated. Hefty octavo, xiii,[1],319,[1]+[3]ad pp. Gray/Blue cloth stamped in black and gilt, Top Edge Gilt. Rubbing and light soiling at spine and cover, leaving some wear to gilt, else basically flawless. About Near Fine. The true first edition, in a rather exceptional state of preservation, of People of the Abyss, perhaps the scarcest of London's ventures into social investigative journalism. In 1902, posing as an out-of-work sailor, he "went underground into the belly of the beast" - the slums of London's East End - where, living on the street and working odd jobs, he was accepted by the locals and was able to collect the experiences retold here. Widely lauded and reprinted still as an activist socio-political masterpiece, it also deeply affected London himself, who said: "No other book of mine took so much of my young heart and tears as that study of the economic degradation of the poor." L-34n

Jack London (1876-1916), was an American author and a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction. He was one of the first Americans to make a lucrative career exclusively from writing. London was self-educated. He taught himself in the public library, mainly just by reading books. In 1898, he began struggling seriously to break into print, a struggle memorably described in his novel, Martin Eden (1909). Jack London was fortunate in the timing of his writing career. He started just as new printing technologies enabled lower-cost production of magazines. This resulted in a boom in popular magazines aimed at a wide public, and a strong market for short fiction. In 1900, he made $2,500 in writing, the equivalent of about $75,000 today. His career was well under way. Among his famous works are: Children of the Frost (1902), The Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea Wolf (1904), The Game (1905), White Fang (1906), The Road (1907), Before Adam (1907), Adventure (1911), and The Scarlet Plague (1912).

Mrs. Meade's heroine is a Liverpool flower-girl, and is drawn with more than her usual vigour. She promises her dying mother to keep her little twin-brothers from harm, and the story tells us how she kept her promise. Other books by L.T. Meade include The Rebel of the School, A Very Naughty Girl, A Modern Tomboy, Wild Kitty, A Girl in Ten Thousand, A Sweet Girl Graduate, and The School Queens.