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Jack LondonThe People of the Abyss (November 20, 2009)

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LibriVox recording of The People of the Abyss, by Jack London. Read by Peter Yearsley.

Jack London lived for a time within the grim and grimy world of the East End of London, where half a million people scraped together hardly enough on which to survive. Even if they were able to work, they were paid only enough to allow them a pitiful existence. He grew to know and empathise with these forgotten (or ignored) people as he spoke with them and tasted the workhouse, life on the streets, ... and the food, which was cheap, barely nutritious, and foul.

He writes about his experiences in a fluid and narrative style, making it very clear what he thinks of the social structures which created the Abyss, and of the millionaires who live high on the labours of a people forced to live in squalor. "... The food this managing class eats, the wine it drinks, ... the fine clothes it wears, are challenged by eight million mouths which have never had enough to fill them, and by twice eight million bodies which have never been sufficiently clothed and housed."

(Summary by Peter Yearsley)

M4B audiobook of complete book

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This audio is part of the collection: The LibriVox Free Audiobook Collection
It also belongs to collections: Audio Books & Poetry; Community Audio

Artist/Composer: Jack London
Date: 2009-11-20
Source: Librivox recording of a public-domain text
Keywords: librivox; audiobook; London; poor; destitute; exploitation

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: lunarvol - - September 22, 2010
Subject: A Half-n-Half for Peter Yearsley -- MorganScorpion -- J.M. Smallheer (three light switches)
"Very enjoyable, many thanks for your effort!"
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Do I understand the quoted comment coda, accurately and correctly? Some taxonomy of Schadenfreude intensive personality disorder?
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I steep in witnessing these lives, motives, social and ethics lacuna tyrannical morbidity every day, right here in 2010 Albany, NY; and have seen even worse "unspeakable mutilations of the spirit" (--W.S. Burroughs) in Murphy County, NC and Memphis, TN. It is no longer a wonder or an enigma to me that these Brobdingnagian blocks of God's children -- these victims of power seizings -- not by Capitalism or Republicans, the Left is precisely as guilty, (for Left read Enlightened Solidarity, including some recent huge co-optings I have recently uncovered [one person one vote no longer obtains, huge block vote group-think voting block{age} obtains]) -- it is no wonder these "disabled fish in a world full of sharks" (--W.S. Burroughs) described herein, and those to whom I refer, still fail to see the cunning and slitty holes in the ostensible syllogistic classical rhetoric -- ready to cling to any carni-con hope proferred, and of the formidable pig iron chains formed and forming by the Communist Manifesto; the lying falsities of which are lit-up, like a frat house or as likely a sorority house, bonfire (certainly as likely at the Univ. of [Madison] Wisconsin, for one) the recently reported very high numbers ... (so high a number that the authorities held cheer-up/esteem re-orientation rallies for a couple of days for a few hours each) ... high numbers of self-destructions by 20-some-THINGS in at least one (typical?) of China's three or four hundreds of thousands of workers assembling and assembled in one electronics components mfg. company, sleeping, when they are allowed to, in packed company dormitories. (And what I saw in Marble and Murphy and _______, NC? Watch for my upcoming book's publication. Hopefully, I will be able to sign a release in the name of the publisher in order to engage all of the above titled in reading it, right here. archive/librivox being a sanity source, a bastion* of Naked Lunch's full frontal and rear exposures, a klieg light at the end of the tunnel which, despite Jack London's and specific others' valiant, laudable attempts, continues to hollow hideous and horrific. The sties and the sighs and the sloppy clowninishly transparent sloganeering propaganda out of a 1933 Berlin redux (with merely a different operational definition of Jew [both utterly arbitrary and without any cogent purchase]) -- these I have been Taking Down since 2000 with panoptic care for detail, and federal or ________ courtroom worthy documentation via _____ and _____. To: "'Very enjoyable, many thanks for your effort!'"? I hope you enjoy my own efforts five times as much, but certainly relatively briefly, just so as for that puffed-up crack to which I alluded, re. the C.M., -et alia-. But, do have a care, mate, sometimes "the eggs" break back! Here's to two more first rate public safety officers, George Orwell and William S. Burroughs which, added to the three at top, and Jack London, reinforces the 6 Stars this reader and author actually deserve.

Reviewer: Philippe Horak - - December 22, 2009
Subject: Excellent recording!
The People of the Abyss is a story about life in the East End of London in 1902. London wrote this first-hand account by living in the East End for several months, sometimes staying in workhouses or sleeping on the streets. The conditions he experienced and wrote about were the same as those endured by an estimated 500,000 of the contemporary London poor. A harrowing account of what poverty meant at the beginning of the 20th century!
Peter Yearsley’s recording is well worth listening to. Very enjoyable, many thanks for your effort!

Reviewer: BookReader365 - - December 6, 2009
Subject: Fine reading
Life amoung the poorest of the poor. Gives you a new insight into homelessness in the modern world.

Reviewer: penthorpe - - November 28, 2009
Subject: a true nightmare
A harrowing and heartbreaking document of poverty, tragedy and desperation in London's East End, 1902. Superbly read by Peter Yearsley.