In the nineteenth century, urban criticism was often formulated by the pen of travelling women, such as the Peruvian-French publicist and walker Flora Tristan (1803-1844), who processed her experiences as a single, working woman in her socio-politically committed writings. Five years before the publication of Friedrich Engels’ Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England, Tristan published her observations on the conditions of the English working class. In London, the ‘ville monstre’, the cauldron of capitalism and mass misery, she explored the quarters and the living environment of the marginalised and excluded population, the prisons, the mental institutions, the brothels, and the slums.