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The Environment
- The Victorian Development of the Idea of "the Public Interest"
- Nature as Amenity and Liberal Economics in The Victorian Age
- How Filthy Was London?
- Metropolitan mud, filthy streets, and âA Thaw in the Streets of London (1865)â
- âA London Fogâ (from the 1849 Illustrated London News)
- âA Fog in the Streets of Londonâ (1867 Illustrated London News)
- King Coal â Industrial and Domestic Air Pollution and the Reaction against it
- Pollution in Sheffied
Sewage Disposal and the Pollution of the Thames
- Kingsley, Millar, Chadwick on Poverty, Environment. and Epidemics
- From Inconvenience to Pollution â Redefining Sewage in The Victorian Age
- Technological Solutions: The Abbey Mills Pumping Station
- London Nightmen (cesspool-sewermen)
- Good Intentions, Unexpected Consequences: Thames Pollution of and The Great Stink of 1858
- Punch on Thames Pollution (1859)
- Faraday Giving His Card to Father Thames: Punch on pollution of waterways (1855)
- âThe Purification of The Thamesâ (Editorial, The Illustrated London News, 24 July 1858)
- Charles Dickens and âthe Big Stinkâ
- Use of Metropolitan Sewage in Agriculture (1864)
Air Pollution
- Stained Glass and Gaslight â Darkness, Smog, and a Little Light in Victorian Cities
- Oxford at 1850
- Coal Fires, Gas illumination, and Victorian London as a "Heat Island"
- Sanitation and Its absence
- Chadwick's Report on Sanitary Conditions
- Fun (1878) on polluting smoke and industryâs effect on the environment
- Fun (1878) on pollutionâs effect on sculpture
Industrial Pollution and Environmental Dangers in the Workplace
- Robbed of âtwenty-five years of existenceâ â The Trades of Sheffield and their dangers to worker's health
- High mortality rates of Sheffield knife grinders (1881)
Suggested Readings: The Environment in Victorian Literature
Perhaps the most obvious works concerning the Victorian environment and its degradation are John Ruskinâs âThe Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Centuryâ and Gerard Manley Hopkins's âBinsey Poplars.â Charles Dickensâs Our Mutual Friend and Ruskinâs âThe King of the Golden Riverâ also have important things to say on this topic.
Suggested Readings: Victorian Air Pollution
On the discussion list Victoria Stephen Basdeo suggested the following articles and books about air pollution.
Brimblecombe, Peter. âLate Victorian Air Pollutionâ in Smoke and Mirrors: the Politics and Culture of Air Pollution. Ed. E. Melanie DuPuis. New York: New York University Press, 2004.
Lewis, Jim. Water and Waste: Four Hundred Years of Health Improvements in the Lea Valley. London: Middlesex University Press, 2009.
Luckin, Bill. âRevisiting the Idea of Degeneration in Urban Britain, 1830-1900â. Urban History 33: 2 (2006): 234-52.
Luckin, Bill. 'The heart and home of horror': The great London fogs of the late nineteenth century.' Social History 28: 1 (2003): 31-48.
Mosley, Stephen. The Chimney of the World: A History of Smoke Pollution in Victorian and Edwardian Manchester. London: Routledge, 2001.
Stephen Mosley, 'A Disaster in Slow Motion: The Smoke Menace in Urban Industrial Britain' in Learning and Calamities: Practices, Interpretations, Patterns. Ed. Heike Egner, MarÃĐn Schorch, Martin Voss (2014).
Stephen Mosley, âFresh Air and Foul: The Role of the Open Fireplace in Ventilating the British Home, 1837-1910' Planning Perspectives 18: 1 (2003): 1-21.
Platt, Harold L. âThe Invisible Evil: Noxious Vapour and Public Health in Manchester during the Age of Industryâ in Smoke and Mirrors: . Ed. M. DuPuis.
Thorsheim, Peter. Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke and Culture in Britain since 1800. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2006.
Book Reviews
Miller, John MacNeill. The Ecological Plot: How Stories Gave Rise to a Science. (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press: 2024). [Review by Dipyaman Bhowmick]
Last modified 19 March 2026
