Flora Tristan was quite a woman, and as her life was not typical of her time (or any time for that matter), so this travel book is not typical of travel books in general. She visited London three times to gather support for her conviction that the English aristocracy cared for nothing but material wealth and abused the rest of the populace in order to acquire it. She hoped to warn the rest of Europe away from English practice. Here you will find no descriptions of historical monuments or visits in stately homes. Instead, Flora used every wile in her arsenal to get into the prisons, infant schools, and poor neighborhoods of what she called "The Monster City." She even disguised herself as a Turkish man to get into both houses of Parliament.
I find it sad that many of her commenaries could have been written yesterday as easily as 160 years ago. In a typical passage Flora writes,"---hunger is not the only reason for attacks on property. Since in our society money can satisfy every passion and surmount every obstacle, since money is a substitute for talent, honour and probity, since money opens every door, then man will stop at nothing to acquire it. Nobody is content with his position in life, everybody seeks to rise in the world; and the crimes committed in the name of this universal ambition are incalculable." That gives a feeling for her prose. She becomes shrill in her denunciation of the English as a nation. She is a vocal socialist and feminist, and her work rewards a history student. The casual reader hoping for a balanced look at London in the 1830's will be disappointed. ( )