Vagrancy and the Victorian Age: Representing the Wandering Poor in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture by Alistair Robinson

Reviewed by: Vagrancy and the Victorian Age: Representing the Wandering Poor in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture by Alistair Robinson Luke Seaber (bio) Alistair Robinson, Vagrancy and the Victorian Age: Representing the Wandering Poor in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), pp. xi + 254, $99.99 hardcover, $80 e-book. Roy Porter’s edited collection Myths of the English (1992) examined various figures and phenomena to which the label “mythic” might be expected to apply: Mother Goose, Wellington, Armistice Day. Some figures, however, less obviously “radiate meanings and mythologies supportive of the English way of life” (Porter, 4). Amongst these is the tramp. Oddly, so important a cultural figure has received relatively scant attention in literary criticism; M. A. Crowther’s chapter in Myths of the English remains one of the most valuable overviews. At last a comprehensive study of this figure in the nineteenth century has emerged: Alistair Robinson’s excellent Vagrancy and the Victorian Age. The title of Robinson’s book is a little misleading insofar as it begins before Victoria’s accession and ends after her death and includes the United States and South Pacific. The introduction provides a sound overview of writing on vagrancy during previous periods before turning to Charles Lamb’s 1822 “A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis.” Robinson explores the various taxonomies and theories of vagrants in nineteenth-century Britain against the background of legal, social, and cultural change. The book itself borrows from “the Victorians’ taxonomic approach to vagrancy” for its structure (8). It consists of studies of three chorographic areas: the country, the city, and the frontier. Each area then focuses on two different vagrant types. The first section, on the country, examines “Gypsies” and “poachers.” Robinson uses the term “Gypsy” (and later, “American Indian”), recognizing that it is contested but concluding that his book “is chiefly concerned with the representation of vagrants” (10). In a book about figures who reveal authors’ and observers’ prejudices and fantasies, the use of the word continually reminds us that the Gypsies discussed in no way map onto historical Romanis any more than “loafers” (themselves also on occasion racialized in texts) map onto the historical poor. This chapter usefully discusses representations of Gypsies, including valuable analysis of George Borrow’s writing, but it suffers somewhat from the chronological limitations imposed upon it. It focuses on the early nineteenth century, with little on the very important scholarship and representation regarding Gypsies from the 1880s onwards. The second chapter provides fascinating analysis of the poacher’s presence in literature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, [End Page 303] examining Hannah More’s Black Giles, the Poacher (1796), Charles Dickens’s The Chimes (1844), and two generally overlooked novels of the Hungry Forties: Charlton Carew’s The Poacher’s Wife: A Story of the Times (1847) and Charles Kingsley’s Yeast: A Problem (1848). Robinson traces how “vagrancy was incorporated into poaching narratives for didactic and political ends” (81). His argument and analysis are extremely convincing and offer valuable new insights into Victorian constructions of the rural. Robinson shifts his gaze to the city in the second section. He looks first at “casual paupers,” in a remarkable chapter that should become required reading for anyone interested in the subject. Casual paupers, those sleeping in workhouse casual wards, were of particular interest to authors publishing in periodicals, the most famous example being James Greenwood’s “A Night in a Workhouse,” published in the Pall Mall Gazette in January 1866. Robinson is as brilliant on this as he is on lesser-known pieces published over the years. Indeed, had he only found and described the pieces that he discusses, scholars of the Victorian casual ward would already owe him a debt of thanks. Alongside such well-known sources as Greenwood’s The Seven Curses of London (1869) and John Rutherford’s Indoor Paupers (1885), Robinson examines material from a range of periodicals through the lens of Foucauldian biopolitics, including Bell’s New Weekly Messenger, All the Year Round, Temple Bar, and the Staffordshire Advertiser. His incisive analysis makes this chapter of great value, especially in its final section on Luke...

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