Hawkers, Beggars and Quacks : Portraits from The Cries of London, Hardcover by Shesgreen, Sean, ISBN 1851245510, ISBN-13 9781851245512, Brand New, Free shipping in the US
<b>Seventy-four striking portraits of men and women on the margins of London society in the seventeenth century—including street vendors and petty criminals.</b><br>  <br><i>“Buy my Dish of great Eeles, Any Old Iron take money for, Twelve Pence a Peck Oysters, Buy my fat Chickens, Fair Lemons & Oranges.”</i><br><br> At the end of the seventeenth century, the artist Marcellus Laroon became well known for a series of drawings that illustrated London’s marginal men and women: street vendors, hustlers, and petty criminals. This set of drawings came to be known as <i>The Cries of London</i> after the shouts and cries vendors used to hawk their wares.<br>  <br><i>Hawkers, Beggars and Quacks</i> presents seventy-four of Laroon’s striking portraits. Following an illustrated introduction that contextualizes <i>The Cries of London</i>, each portrait is beautifully reproduced with a commentary on the individual street-seller and their trade. These commentaries provide a wealth of detail about each seller’s dress, the equipment they used to ply their trade, their own diets, and the diets of those they served.<br><br> Drawing on historic material found in the British Library’s Burney Collection of English newspapers, <i>Hawkers, Beggars and Quacks</i> provides a fascinating insight into the men and women who made their livelihood—legally and illegally—on the streets of England’s capital.