<div>From tabloid exposes of child prostitution to the grisly <br>tales of Jack the Ripper, narratives of sexual danger <br>pulsated through Victorian London. Expertly blending social <br>history and cultural criticism, Judith Walkowitz shows how <br>these narratives reveal the complex dramas of power, <br>politics, and sexuality that were being played out in late <br>nineteenth-century Britain, and how they influenced the <br>language of politics, journalism, and fiction. <br><br>Victorian London was a world where long-standing traditions <br>of class and gender were challenged by a range of public <br>spectacles, mass media scandals, new commercial spaces, and a <br>proliferation of new sexual categories and identities. In <br>the midst of this changing culture, women of many classes <br>challenged the traditional privileges of elite males and <br>asserted their presence in the public domain. <br><br>An important catalyst in this conflict, argues Walkowitz, was <br>W. T. Stead's widely read 1885 article about child <br>prostitution. Capitalizing on the uproar caused by the piece <br>and the volatile political climate of the time, women spoke <br>of sexual danger, articulating their own grievances against <br>men, inserting themselves into the public discussion of sex <br>to an unprecedented extent, and gaining new entree to public <br>spaces and journalistic practices. The ultimate <br>manifestation of class anxiety and gender antagonism came in <br>1888 with the tabloid tales of Jack the Ripper. In between, <br>there were quotidien stories of sexual possibility and urban <br>adventure, and Walkowitz examines them all, showing how women <br>were not simply figures in the imaginary landscape of male <br>spectators, but also central actors in the stories of <br>metropolotin life that reverberated in courtrooms, learned <br>journals, drawing rooms, street corners, and in the letters <br>columns of the daily press. <br><br>A model of cultural history, this ambitious book will <br>stimulate and enlighten readers across a broad range of <br>interests. <br><br></div>