All Sorts and Conditions of Men

A brewery heiress fresh from Cambridge hides her money, a young man brought up as a gentleman learns he is a Stepney sergeant's son, and both settle in the East End to find out what it actually needs — and build a Palace of Delight for it. Besant published this in 1882, and the People's Palace on the Mile End Road was opened five years later because of it. Few novels have produced a building; this one did, and the book is honest about how little else it changed. Fifty-four plates by painters including Luke Fildes and John Atkinson Grimshaw run from moonlight quays to a casual ward, matching the East End light and shadow of the story.