The People of the Abyss (New ed.)

A profound and moving piece of investigative journalism, The People of the Abyss, Jack London's study of East London's underworld remains, a century after it was written, a timely tale of poverty and injustice. Best known for his fiction such as White Fang and The Call of the Wild, Jack London was also a passionate social activist.

In 1902, he purchased some second-hand clothes, rented a room in the East End, and set out to discover how the London poor lived.

His research makes shocking reading. Moving through the slums as one of the poor; eating, drinking and socialising with the underclass; queuing to get into a doss-house, London was scandalised and brutalised by the experience of living rough in Britain's capital.

His clear-eyed reflections on the iniquities of class are a shaming testament to the persistence of social inequality in modern Britain.