For much of Victorian society in Britain, "Victorian life" meant "life in London." By 1901, roughly 20% of Britain's population lived in London. By Victorian days, London was already rapidly swallowing up smaller towns, villages, and lands that had once been considered separate entities. Many of the independent villages explored in the "Curiosities of..." articles below, dating from 1868, are now considered a part of London itself. We've included them here to provide a glimpse of what London's neighborhoods once looked like! Victorian magazines often ran articles on London's poorer districts and street markets, presumably based on the assumption that most of the magazine's readers might never have seen these less fashionable areas of the metropolis!

A French Invasion (Leisure Hour, 1860)

The effects of the settlement of the exiled French Huguenots in London.

What I Saw at the London Docks (Leisure Hour, 1860)

Curiosities of Battersea, by John Timbs (Leisure Hour, 1868)

I include this under London - but in 1868 this was "a village in Surrey."

Curiosities of Islington, by John Timbs (Leisure Hour, 1868)

Curiosities of Lambeth, by John Timbs (Leisure Hour, 1868)

Curiosities of Paddington, by John Timbs (Leisure Hour, 1868)

Curiosities of the Port of London, by John Timbs (Leisure Hour, 1868)

Temple Bar (Leisure Hour, 1868)

The Gaul in Soho (Cassell's Family Magazine, 1875)

Metropolitan Sundays: Shoreditch (Cassell's Family Magazine, 1876)

A look at "Sunday" on the streets of one of the poorer areas of London.

An Hour by Seven Dials (Cassell's Family Magazine, 1877)

A look at a section of London "associated in our minds with all the worst vices of lower London life."

Bedford Park (Harper's Monthly, 1881A)

A Tour Through "Little France" (Cassell's Family Magazine, 1886)

Soho Square, an area that became home to a large number of refugees from the French Revolution.

[Hampstead Heath] A Rural Paradise for London, by F.M. Holmes (Cassell's Family Magazine, 1887)

Old Chelsea, by Benjamin Ellis Martin (Century Magazine, 1887A)

A Whitechapel Street, by E. Dixon (English Illustrated Magazine, 1890A)

New Lands for Londoners (Cassell's Family Magazine, 1891)

On the opening of Buckinghamshire to Londoners via a new railway extension.

The Story of the Strand (The Strand, 1891A)

An account of the famous street that would become the home of the Strand magazine.

A Visit to the Minories (Girl's Own Paper, 1901)

A visit to a London street near the Tower of London.