British aestheticism and the urban working classes, 1870-1900

About this book

"British Aestheticism and the Urban Working Classes, 1870-1900: Beauty for the People explores the ways in which middle-class people sought to bring gifts of beauty to the slums of London. Diana Maltz throws fresh light on British Aestheticism as a social movement, on bourgeois myths and insights into tenement life, and on late Victorian cultural philanthropy in practice. Maltz offers a stimulating reinterpretation of the social reformers Octavia Hill, Samuel Barnett, and Henrietta Barnett, and her chapters examine fictional treatments of 'missionary aestheticism' by Walter Peter, George Gissing, and Arthur Morrison as well as visual satires by cartoonists Charles Keene and George Du Maurier."--Jacket.