'Capital Offences: Geographies of Class and Crime in Victorian London' by Simone Joyce: Victorian Literature and Culture. Charlottesville and London: U of Virginia P, 2003. ix + 267. ISBN 0-8139-2180-5. AU$106.50, US$39.50 (hardcover).

The title of this volume, one issued, very significantly, in its publisher's Victorian Literature and Culture Series, indicates thereby to the reader both its foci and also something of its complex interplay between several investigations - those of: criminal behaviour; the lifestyles of the more identifiable zones of the great and suddenly expanding English capital city in mid- and later Victorian times; and of the (social) patterns to be expected in them. As well it treats of various (recorded) figures, altruistic or predatory, real or fictional, who chose/would choose to visitwhat would soon be designated the "East End."