Hard Streets (Hardback)

Working-Class Lives in Charlie Chaplin’s London

Jacqueline Riding

Welcome to the hard streets: working-class London at the beginning of the twentieth century, from the author of Hogarth and Peterloo

Charlie Chaplin rose from the hard streets of Edwardian London to worldwide fame. But his work and outlook were always shaped by the world he came from, a place of cheap entertainments and the threat of the workhouse, radical politics and desperate poverty.

Framed through the life of this iconic success story, acclaimed historian Jacqueline Riding reveals working-class London at the turn of the twentieth century. Breathing life into forgotten stories of mothers and sons, labourers and actors, vagrants and sex workers, of suffering, survival and success against the odds, this compelling social history paints a striking portrait of a vanished city.

Publication date: 05/02/2026

£25.00

ISBN: 9781800818644

Imprint: Profile Books

Subject: Arts, Language & Literature, Biography & Memoir, History & Classics

Hard Streets (Ebook)

Working-Class Lives in Charlie Chaplin’s London

Jacqueline Riding

Preorder from

Welcome to the hard streets: working-class London at the beginning of the twentieth century, from the author of Hogarth and Peterloo

Charlie Chaplin rose from the hard streets of Edwardian London to worldwide fame. But his work and outlook were always shaped by the world he came from, a place of cheap entertainments and the threat of the workhouse, radical politics and desperate poverty.

Framed through the life of this iconic success story, acclaimed historian Jacqueline Riding reveals working-class London at the turn of the twentieth century. Breathing life into forgotten stories of mothers and sons, labourers and actors, vagrants and sex workers, of suffering, survival and success against the odds, this compelling social history paints a striking portrait of a vanished city.

Publication date: 05/02/2026

£21.99

ISBN: 9781800818668

ISBN 10 / ASIN: B0DG9P4NWN

Imprint: Profile Books

Subject: Arts, Language & Literature, Biography & Memoir, History & Classics

Reviews for Hard Streets

'Praise for Hogarth: Wonderfully meandering and original'

 Guardian

'Deft and richly detailed'

 Sunday Times

'An excellent new biography'

Kathryn Hughes Daily Mail

'Marvellous and timely ... Jacqueline Riding makes sensitive and imaginative use of a wide range of often difficult and neglected sources ... a vivid and compelling reconstruction'

Linda Colley, author The Gun, The Ship and the Pen

Jacqueline Riding

Jacqueline Riding

Dr Jacqueline Riding is a historian and art historian specialising in British history and art of the long eighteenth century. Former curator of the Palace of Westminster and Director of the Handel House Museum, she is an award-winning author as well as a consultant for museums, galleries, historic buildings and feature films. She was the adviser on Mike Leigh's Mr. Turner (2014), Peterloo (2018) and Wash Westmoreland's Colette (2018).