London labour and the London poor : a cyclopaedia of the condition and earnings of those that will work, those that cannot work, and those that will not work

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BEIN Gray Social Thought 1593: Publisher's original cloth binding stamped in gilt (at foot of spine): G. Newbold, 310, Strand. From the library of Bradford H. Gray.
With wood-engraved illustrations by Walter George Mason and Elijah Whymper, after drawings by Henry George Hine and Henry Anelay. Some of the illustrations are based on daguerreotypes by Richard Beard.
Volumes 2 and 3 lack title pages.
The work has a complicated publishing history, details of which are described in Humpherys (see especially pages 26 and 106-107). Volume 1 was first published in 1851, volume 2 not before 1856, and volume 3 apparently in 1861. Volume 2 ends mid-sentence (on page 432) due to a contract dispute between Mayhew and his printer, George Woodfall.
Humpherys, A. Travels into the poor man's country.
BAC: British Art Center copy includes "Answers to correspondents" (with a number of pages assembled from multiple clippings) bound in at the end of volume 3. Bound in publisher's original gilt- and blind-stamped blue cloth. Bookplates: Children's Aid Society, London, 1964; The Legge Library ... Office of the National Association of Certified Reformatory & Industrial Schools ... London. Autograph: Als. (?) Vernon. Publisher's original cloth binding stamped in gilt (at foot of spine): G. Newbold, 8 Regent St., Westminster.
"A seminal study of London street life in the middle of the [19th] century ... [with] details of Victorian lower-class life, such as what kinds of foods were sold on the streets, how financial transactions with street-sellers were conducted, and how vendors 'cried' their wares ... The study had its origin in a series of eighty-two articles, published from October 1849 through December 1850, entitled 'Labour and the poor', in the Morning Chronicle ..."--Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.