London in the eighteenth century was a new city, risen from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1666 that had destroyed half its homes and great public buildings. This book offers a street-level view of the city: its public gardens and prisons, its banks and brothels, its workshops and warehouses and its bustling crowds. White introduces us to shopkeepers and prostitutes, men and women of fashion, genius and street-robbers, as they play out the astonishing drama of life in eighteenth-century London.