Flora Tristan's London Journal 1840 : A Survey of London Life in the 1830s

In 1826 a most unusual Frenchwoman visited England, and she came again in 1831, 1835, and 1839. This was Flora Tristan (1803-1844), one of the earliest socialists (Marx used many of her ideas in his 1848 manifesto) and feminists, a woman remembered today, if at all, as the grandmaother of Gaugin. Flora Tristan came to inspect London from top to bottom and this she did, visiting prisons, brothels, asylums, factories, gin palaces, infant schools, the Irish and Jewish ghettos, Chartist meetings, Ascot races and the House of Parlament (to which she gained entry by dressing as a Turk). She was an acute observer, and her wonderful journal brings to life in a remarkable way conditions of life in 'the monster city'. Vice - 80,000 prostitutes, many of them children, the wretched life of the poor, the dehumanising effects of the Industrial Revolution, the climate, the food, the architecture, the countryside, the daily lives of ordinary men and women, all come in for Gallic comment, sometimes enraged, always colourful, compassionate and full of life. Flora Tristan was a woman of striking personality, a brilliant social critic and a graphic diarist. Published in French in 1840 and 1842, this, the first translation into English of the popular 1842 edition, is a masterpiece of nineteenth-century literature and history. -- from book's back cover