Culture October 2, 2012

In the first chapter of his exposé on the utter decrepitude of East London, The People of the Abyss (1903), Jack London seeks out those “trail-clearers, living sign-posts to all the world,” in other words, the Cook’s travel agents, known for sending curious and adventurous Britons to “Darkest Africa or Innermost Thibet,” for advice on how to navigate, indeed how to find, the East End of London. ‘You can’t do it, you know,’ said the human emporium of routes and fares at Cook’s Cheapside branch. ‘It is so—ahem—so unusual.” Indeed.