深渊居民 (1903)

《深渊居民》（The People of the Abyss，1903）是杰克·伦敦描写1902年伦敦东区人民生活的一部著作。其内容都是他自己的亲身体验，数月里他一直呆在该地区的济贫院甚至露宿街头以体验生活。当时伦敦大约有50万有类似遭遇的人们。

介绍

在此之前恩格斯就写过《1844年英格兰工人阶级状况》描述同样的事情，不过恩格斯所描写的内容多是二手消息，不像《深渊居民》的内容是基于一手来源写成的。

1890年，雅各·里斯出版了《另一半人怎样生活》，它被认为是《深渊居民》创作灵感来源。因为当时《深渊居民》的广告上写的是“只有读过雅各·里斯关于纽约的著作的人才能领会”。

当杰克伦敦写作时，“Abyss”（深渊）一词被广泛用来指代底层社会。H·G·威尔斯的《Anticipations》（1902年）就用过这个词以及“the People of the Abyss”。

乔治·奥威尔青年时受到了此书的启发，1930年代他也开始乔装行走于贫民区。此书的影响可以在其《巴黎伦敦落魄记》以及《通往威根码头之路》中看到。

英国记者暨编辑Bertram Fletcher Robinson在书评当中写到"很难再找到比这本书所描写的景象更悲惨的了"。

The People of the Abyss is a 1903 book by Jack London, containing his first-hand account of several weeks spent living in the Whitechapel district of the East End of London in 1902. London attempted to understand the working-class of this deprived area of the city, sleeping in workhouses or on the streets, and staying as a lodger with a poor family.

Antecedents and legacy

There had been several previous accounts of slum conditions in England, notably The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) by Friedrich Engels. Most had been based on secondhand sources, unlike London's personal account. A contemporary advertisement for the book compared it to Jacob Riis's sensational How the Other Half Lives (1890), which had documented life in the slums of New York City in the 1880s.

George Orwell was inspired by The People of the Abyss, which he had read in his teens. In the 1930s, he began disguising himself as a derelict and made tramping expeditions into the poor section of London. The influence of The People of the Abyss can be seen in Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier.

Reviewing the book for the Daily Express, journalist and editor Bertram Fletcher Robinson wrote that it would be "difficult to find a more depressing volume".

Phraseology

When London wrote the book, the phrase "the Abyss", with its connotation of Hell, was in wide use to refer to the life of the urban poor. It featured in H. G. Wells's popular 1901 book Anticipations multiple times, along with the phrase "the People of the Abyss", which he would use again in Chapter 3 of Mankind in the Making (1903). In 1907 London used the expression "the people of the abyss" in The Iron Heel, a work of dystopian science fiction set in the United States.