Golden Duck's edition of the 1934 bestseller Cheapjack by Margery Allingham's brother, Philip, containsover 30 photographs from the National Fairground Archive, the Allingham Society and other sources. An introduction by FRANCIS WHEEN discuses slumming in the 1930s and describes Cheapjack as an extraordinary autobiography. VANESSA TOULMIN of Sheffield University puts Cheapjack and its language in the context of the secretive society of showmen, hawkers and Gypsy travellers and calls it an important historic record. Margery Allingham's biographer, JULIA JONES, reveals the extent of detective...

At this late date we shall probably never fully understand how the Victorians read the illustrations that accompanied so much of popular fiction upon its initial appearance, that is, in the many illustrated periodicals that sprang up about 1860 and gradually declined in number and quality in the 1890s as a consequence of cheaper paper, public libraries, and a better educated reading public (probably resulting from the General Education Act of 1870). What effect did such pictures have upon the process of creative visualisation that every reader, no matter how capable or inept,...