Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London - Matthew Beaumont

An exploration of night in the city of London through literary portraits from Chaucer to Dickens.
The book offers a great picture of the life of the street in pre-modern times, with all the sights, smells and sounds that are so often forgotten.
It is also a social history of the grind of poverty and the attempt to survive in periods when being poor and destitute was essentially criminalized.  At the same time it is a history of the elite's exercise of control and authority in the urban environment, and the sense of threat that the street presented them.  You get a sense of the authoritarian oppressiveness of the ruling class in English history.
There are several sections that explore nightwalking as an antiestablishment artistic/social phenomenon, which is interesting.  Links to Wordsworth and other Romantic poets.
Dickens was also a great nightwalker, mainly due to insomnia - this walking is given credit for his understanding of the street and the many inhabitants of it, both low and high.

Well-written.