Description

‘Fascinating … not only a history of graffiti, but also a history of the 18th century through lost voices of the people who lived through it.’ The Times

What if walls could talk? For historian Madeleine Pelling, they can – if you know where to look.

A brilliant new cultural history of the long eighteenth century, Writing on the Wall is told through the marks its citizens left behind, bringing into focus lost voices from the highest to the lowest in society. From the centre of London to the islands of the Caribbean, Pelling goes in search of graffiti, evidence of how ordinary people experienced the world-changing events that defined their lives – from political prisoners to sex workers, homesick sailors, Romantic poets and the artisans of the industrial revolution.

Here are lives, loves, triumphs and failures, scratched into the walls of prisons and latrines, chalked up on doors and etched into windows. The names of their creators may be lost to history, but together they tell the real story of Britain’s most rebellious and transformative century.

Publisher Review

You’ve read the Austen and seen the Gainsboroughs, well this is the real Eighteenth Century in the words of those who walked the streets, worked the coal seems and clung to the topsail yards. — Dan Snow From the ingenious starting point of a humble scratch on glass or daub on brick, Madeleine Pelling crafts a rich and complex portrait of a society in transition — Jacqueline Riding, author * Hogarth: A Life in Progress * An erudite, dazzling and thought-provoking study of the graffiti of the period – be its creator Romantic poet or Jacobite, King Mob or Caribbean prisoner of war, Pelling teases out lost narratives with humanity and flair — Flora Fraser, author * Pretty Young Rebel * An extraordinary history of ordinary people. In this original and impressive study of eighteenth-century graffiti, Pelling foregrounds the protestors, prisoners, rebels and romantics who all left their unique mark on the past — Hannah Grieg, historian and consultant on ‘Bridgerton’ and ‘The Favourite’ From the ingenious starting point of a humble scratch on glass or daub on brick, Madeleine Pelling crafts a rich and complex portrait of a society in transition. — Jacqueline Riding, author of Hogarth: Life in Progress and Jacobites: A New History of the ’45 Rebellion