A look into the book

The young woman offers strawberries in Covent Garden. This London area had originally been a convent garden in the Middle Ages, i.e. a fruit and vegetable patch to meet the needs of the local convents, and became one of the most important markets of the city in the 17th century.

Here we see the “king of the travelling merchants” selling warm gingerbread. The hawker who became famous as “Tiddy Diddy Doll, lol, lol, lol” must have lived in the 18th century and was quite eye-catching due to his unusually elegant clothes including a wig and silk stockings.

There is also a travelling merchant and ballad monger in Shakespeare’s play The Winter’s Tale. This means that he did not only offer all sorts of goods but also performed ballads presenting news and gossip in the form of a song.

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