"The unfit and the unneeded! The miserable and despised and forgotten, dying in the social shambles. The progeny of prostitution -- of the prostitution of men and women and children, of flesh and blood, and sparkle and spirit; in brief, the prostitution of labor. If this is the best that civilization can do for the human, then give us howling and naked savagery. Far better to be a people of the wilderness and desert, of the cave and the squatting-place, than to be a people of the machine and the Abyss." (London, 288).
Is London's "howling and naked savagery" a sly comment on
Thomas Hobbes who comments in his book Leviathan (to paraphrase) that life without government is "nasty, brutish and short?"
I also came across a couple of poems by the English poet and cultural critic Matthew Arnold, and one specifically about the East End.
After skimming through a fairly comprehensive Wikipedia article on The East End of London, I believe my next purchase will be a book by the founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth, entitled In Darkest England and the Way Out
.
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