Images of the Outcast

This study offers a survey of the changing depiction of the denizens of London's streets-mechanic preachers, prostitutes, milkmaids, tinkers, beggars, and all manner of hawkers-as these were represented in Cries produced between 1580 and 1900. It draws on the history of art, literature, and society to analyse the meaning of the Cries in the culture of London over three centuries, and studies Cries as a genre with its own self-sustaining life - the life of art - but also reads the genre in a social and cultural historical context.