In mid-nineteenth century London, the concept of a unified sewage system was gaining traction.
This involved standardising and ordering the circulatory routes that waste took through urban
space, but it also sparked a proliferation of discourse in excremental economics. By this logic,
waste could be made useful: transformed from the depleted leftovers of urban life to a valuable
commodity. In short, waste was not simply understood as stagnant accumulations, but as matter
moving in potentially perpetual cycles. Focusing on a broad spectrum of genres from the Blue
Book to the juvenile penny serial, this thesis investigates how texts from the 1840s to the 1860s
engage with, and struggle against, the logics of circulating waste.
The first chapter of this thesis delves into the sanitary rhetoric of the late 1840s and early 50s and
its attempt to construct and convey a comprehensive sanitary system. The second chapter
examines the unproductive circulations of Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit. In chapter three, the
focus shifts to Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor’s descent into disorganisation
through portrayals of transforming, mutating matter. The final chapter looks towards the
juvenile penny serial The Wild Boys of London and the ways in which circulation disrupts its
redemptive arcs. I argue that rather than showing the utopian potential of endlessly recyclable,
renewable matter, these texts illustrate how the principles of circulating waste can infect narrative
forms, work against organisational strategies and establish limits for progress and selfimprovement.