‘Charitable adventure’, and other related, equally complex motives, form the subject of Seth Koven's sensitive and exceptionally detailed study, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London. Koven's book examines the widespread activity of ‘slumming’ in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century London, whereby those from the upper and bourgeois classes travelled across the city to the East End to see how the ‘other half’ lived, to gaze upon the poverty and squalor of the lower classes as well as to provide relief and assistance. Thus, Koven not only contributes substantially to the growing literature on Victorian philanthropy by analysing in great depth the many contradictions which beset charitable institutions and prominent individuals, but, even more importantly, Koven builds upon the work of Deborah Epstein Nord and Judith Walkowitz, who have focused on the representations of city life provided by those who navigated paths through its many varied spaces. Koven convincingly argues that by visiting London's slums and attempting to form relationships with the poor inhabitants, well-to-do ‘slummers’ were able to challenge social norms, ideals and preconceptions at the heart of respectable society, in particular, those concerning class, gender and sexuality. Although many sought to alleviate poverty or to expose working men and women to high culture, the ‘slummers’ also had a valuable investment in the environment they supposedly hoped to change.

Koven divides the book into two complementary parts. The first, ‘Incognitos, fictions and cross-class masquerades’, is composed of three case studies, examining the use of ‘deceptive practices’, such as photography and undercover investigative reporting, by journalists and philanthropists to expose ‘truths’ about life in the slums. Journalist James Greenwood's description of a night spent in a London workhouse disguised as a vagrant, Dr Barnado's use of photographs of ragged children to raise funds for his East End Juvenile Mission, and the various incognito adventures of American journalist Elizabeth Banks are explored by Koven in extraordinary detail. He demonstrates how these representations of ‘truth’ could arouse great public sympathy, generate moral panics and force deep self-examination among readers and observers. Most of all, Koven demonstrates how their actual ‘truthfulness’ was brought under the microscope as the substantial social impact of these representations of slum life led Londoners to question the motives of their producers.

The second part of Slumming, in which Koven seeks to move from a biographical approach to a panoramic view, is equally gripping. Koven examines the role of the famous female and male philanthropic settlements established in slum neighbourhoods located in very heart of the East End, from which the well-to-do inhabitants attempted to forge links with their working sisters and brothers. Koven first turns his attention to the labours of elite women, focusing on their simultaneous abhorrence of and fascination with the ‘dirt’ of slum life. ‘Dirt’, Koven argues, captures the essence of women's philanthropic work: not only were these women anxious to remove the dirt from the lives of their sisters, but also going “dirty” made it possible for them to flout bourgeois class and gender expectations' (p. 198). Finally, Koven turns to explore the fraternal ideologies that informed the efforts of men associated with Oxford House and Toynbee Hall. Their residence within these communities and their attempts at cross-class brotherhood allowed these privileged men to challenge systems of class while gaining first-hand experiences of problems they would later confront as leading members of parliament, as civil servants and as important clergymen in the established church.

The theme which Koven uses to draw these chapters together is that of ‘queerness’. As part of his larger claim that it is impossible to keep sex, sexual desire and sexuality out of the story, Koven argues that the ‘slummers’ had ‘queer’ motives, and their subjects, the slum dwellers, could be perceived as ‘queer’. His definition of ‘queer’ is wide, intriguing and useful: Koven uses the term not only to refer to homosexual impulses, but, more importantly, to demonstrate the extent to which the ‘slummers’ were perceived as ‘odd’ or strange, and actively challenged social norms, especially those concerned with gender. It is certainly an illuminating viewpoint. However, at times the concentrated focus on this single theme creates problems in Koven's narrative. In his account of the philanthropic women who supported the female settlements in the East End slums, Koven centres much of his analysis of their motives and desires on the statement of a friend of Edith Sling: ‘But there will be something the matter with the ladies!’ (p. 198). This concentrated focus and the sexual segregation it creates in the book, combined with the reluctance of the enquiry to move beyond deep case studies, does leave a sense that Koven has not covered the range of motivations that led the well-to-do to the slums as promised in the introduction of the book. ‘Charitable adventure’, the phrase that sums up the very tension between Eros and altruism, seems to become lost somewhere in the progress of the book, and its key subtleties overlooked.

Moreover, although set in London, the flavour and colour of the metropolis at times seems to be missing. At the very opening of the book, Koven highlights the close proximity of the slums which collapsed the space between two very different sets of metropolitan inhabitants: ‘Slums were anarchic, distant outposts of empire, peopled by violent and primitive races; but they were also conveniently close, only a short stroll from the Bank of England and St Paul's, inhabited by Christian brothers and sisters’ (p. 4). He then successfully re-opens this space through the course of the book, highlighting the sense of distance the ‘slummers’ felt during their time in the settlements from the affluent bourgeois society of the West End. Yet the actual topography of London is largely ignored, its geographical characteristics all but sidelined, and this oversight does, at times, detract from Koven's analysis. But these criticisms only emerge because the book itself is so engaging and Koven's narrative raises so many possibilities. A reader cannot help but want more. Most of all, Koven expertly demonstrates the importance of the activity of slumming to politics, society and especially culture in Victorian London. It is a study that will certainly enrich future scholarship.