I was noodling around trying to get some nice period research examples to work with in my workshop for Dickens (From Text to Gig - Be there or be rectilinear) when the lightbulb popped on....and I remembered a source I'd used for academic projects to get primary sources w/o lots of time in research libraries or interlibrary loan...but not really for historical reenacting or fairs....

Project Gutenberg
www.gutenberg.org

For those of you who have never dealt with them, Project Gutenberg does FREE e-books, computer plain text versions of books that have usually been done previously in paper and ink. Because of copyright law, most of their books are older texts whose prior copyrights have lapsed....or never existed. That incidentally includes:

Essentially The Complete Works of Chas. Dickens
www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/d#a37

And Jules Verne
www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/v#a60

And even Edward Bulwer-Lytton (It was a dark and stormy night...)
www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/l#a761

Plus there are Victorian Domestic Guides like:
www.gutenberg.org/etext/10766

Books on Manners
www.gutenberg.org/etext/17609

Books on English Prisons & Crime
www.gutenberg.org/etext/21284

Social Satire
www.gutenberg.org/etext/2686

And even the London Missionary Society
www.gutenberg.org/etext/17115

...and I'm barely scratching the surface...

Spend some time looking for books on YOUR subject, and you are unlikely to be disappointed.

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Another grand source is:

The Tufts Digital Library:The Bolles Collection on the History of London
nils.lib.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/perscoll

Which includes such classic and useful e-books appropriate for Dickens Fair as:

Henry Mayhew. "London Labour and the London Poor" (1851)
Thomas Allen. "The City and Antiquities of London, Westminster, Southwark and Parts Adjacent" (Vol 1-4)
An American. "London in 1838"
Edmondo De Amicis. "Jottings about London."
Thomas Archer. "The Pauper, The Thief and The Convict." (1865)
James Greenwood, "Unsentimental Journey; or Byways of the Modern Babylon" (1867)
Miss Octavia Hill, "Homes of the London Poor" (1875)
John Hollingshead. "Ragged London in 1861."
Thomas Hughes. Tom Brown's School Days. (1869)
Charles Knight, "London" (Vol 1-6)
John Tallis, "Tallis's London Street Views" (1838-39)