Influence
Mayhew's work was embraced by and was an influence on the Christian Socialists, such as Thomas Hughes, Charles Kingsley, and F. D. Maurice. Radicals also published sizeable excerpts from the reports in the Northern Star, the Red Republican and other newspapers. The often sympathetic investigations, with their immediacy and unswerving eye for detail, offered unprecedented insights into the condition of the Victorian poor. Alongside the earlier work of Edwin Chadwick, they are also regarded as a decisive influence on the thinking of Charles Dickens.
Mayhew often appears as a character in television and radio histories of Victorian London, played by Timothy West in the documentary London (2004), and David Haig in the Afternoon Play A Chaos of Wealth and Want (2010). In the 2012 novel Dodger by Terry Pratchett, set in 1840s London, fictionalised versions appear of the characters of Mayhew and his wife.
Mayhew was the great-grandfather of Audrey Mayhew Allen (b. 1870), an author of a number of children's stories published in various periodicals, and of a book Gladys in Grammarland, an imitation of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland books.
Read more about this topic: Henry Mayhew
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“Exhaust them, wrestle with them, let them not go until their blessing be won, and, after a short season, the dismay will be overpast, the excess of influence withdrawn, and they will be no longer an alarming meteor, but one more brighter star shining serenely in your heaven, and blending its light with all your day.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We could not well camp higher, for want of fuel; and the trees here seemed so evergreen and sappy, that we almost doubted if they would acknowledge the influence of fire; but fire prevailed at last, and blazed here, too, like a good citizen of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I have always found that when men have exhausted their own resources, they fall back on “the intentions of the Creator.” But their platitudes have ceased to have any influence with those women who believe they have the same facilities for communication with the Divine mind as men have.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)