Hubbub is not a tale of cities but a systematic expose of the varied facets and aspects of urban life that upset, disturbed, annoyed, and disrupted the day-to-day lives of a cast of “inperts” (2), or nonexperts. Emily Cockayne clearly wanted to avoid presenting us with yet another social history of seventeenth- through eighteenth-century London, Oxford, Manchester, or Bath. Instead, her tales of the “stomach-churning” (1) realities of urban life over the course of these two centuries makes it evident that living in bustling English cities was far from enjoyable. You were more than likely to step in something you did not want to, get run over by a hurrying pedestrian or racing cart, or, worse, be overwhelmed with the various stenches—never mind the falling buildings or the pockmarked denizens. It is not a pretty picture, but that is the point. Gleaned from the diaries and journals of Samuel Pepys, Margaret Cavendish, and Robert Hooke—or the more eccentric vegetarian Thomas Tryon—and archival sources, these tribulations give us entry into the seedy side of preindustrial English life. Cockayne argues that historical consideration of early modern aesthetics necessitates looking at everyday experiences, as much as the ugly and disagreeable, in order to balance out historians’ usual interest in the rarefied, beautiful, and pleasant. This book goes into the guts and bowels of early modern English urban life and exposes them in all their gory detail.

The thematic structure is essential to the book. Cockayne makes her sources work for her by realizing that the objects and actions of her study have numerous, yet related, facets. Rather than attempting to turn the teeming, seeping, and heaving tangled webs of social interaction and aesthetic experience of early modern urban life into a false sense of order, she has leapt into its midst. There is a slight progression as these themes move from the looking at what was so upsetting about English city dwellers themselves to city streets, buildings, and passageways. Some repetition is inevitable as she teases out the various thematic facets of the “Dirty,” “Grotty,” and “Noisy” aspects in her inperts’ encounters with dunghills or the “Noisy,” “Busy,” and “Dirty” nature of street life. Each chapter follows one of these gruesome themes. The chapters “Ugly” and “Itchy” focus on the sorry lot of citizens with their sores, marks and scars, and diseased bodies. Even more garish were the lengths to which these men and women went to make themselves presentable. Frequently it was not a rousing success. Poor-fitting, itchy clothes, coupled with lice and fleas, deadly perfumes and powders, and, of course, the infamous wig, were nightmares for all. What went into these bodies was not much better. Ever-increasing distance between fields and farms and the mouths of burgeoning populations meant spoiled and rotten food was common.

Disruptions to the daily grind occupy Cockayne's attention for the remainder of the book. English city streets were dangerous and cacophonous places. Sounds of carts and pedestrians, those attempting to play instruments, and hawkers clashed and permeated through windows and walls, making respite from street noise near impossible. Once in the street itself, its winding medieval path was littered with uneven shop fronts and ill-placed buildings. The presence of stalls and growing traffic made it an obstacle course. Regardless of the traffic, the streets themselves were hazardous with their uneven paving. Yet, on top of all of this, citizens still found ways to make life more difficult. Building materials or ubiquitous dung and waste heaps were left in streets, or cellar entrances were not covered up. Streets had open sewers that made the keeping of thoroughfares, whether grotty little lanes or major roads, difficult. Whether on cart or foot these all required constant navigation. Urban waterways were public cesspits, collecting runoff from shops, human waste, “drown’d puppies” (198), and the odd corpse.

Early modern English cities were busy and dirty but also dangerous. The redevelopment of warrenlike medieval walled towns into bustling preindustrial cities is, for Cockayne, a story of necessity, not a Whiggish tale of progress. Chapters are colored with little anecdotes, drawn from her inperts or archival work, to illustrate the frustrations surrounding particular problems. Street cleaning and waste disposal, lighting, and eventually paving came under administration by civic authorities as it became clear how dangerous and dirty city streets had become. Urban refashioning was not only social; it was architectural. Planning took shape around the need to make streets passable for pedestrians and horse-drawn traffic. Medieval gates and “shambles” were torn down, streets were paved with uniform materials, and curbside obstructions regulated. Urban expansion compounded the problem when the once far-removed workshops of noisy, smelly, or dirty trades were eventually surrounded by new neighborhoods. Change was not always about expansion, though: the rebuilding of London after 1666 made the city less cumbersome for its inhabitants. Use of new building materials altered, along with the wider streets, the production and travel of disruptive sounds.

Cockayne's prose is fluid, making this work an enjoyable read for a broad audience. For the seasoned scholar her research into the crude and disgusting is an important thematic counterpoint to focus on more refined aesthetics. Moreover, Hubbub stands out methodologically by wrestling with the presentation of all types of sensory experiences, not just the visual or the aural. Smell, in particular, receives an airing as a legitimate historical topic. In this regard the lack of a more cohesive engagement with contemporary sensory theories is noticeable as the cursory discussion in the introduction fails to adequately capture the full import of the disturbances she later goes on to detail. Still, Cockayne offers a refreshing conceptualization of the story of life in early modern English cities. Hubbub presents rich, new material for English urban historians but also is an essential addition to the histories of the environment and the senses. It does much to further our understanding of the connections among pollution, disruption, and development of English urban life.