Writing London Vol. I: The Trace of the Urban Text from Blake to Dickens

Writing London asks the reader to consider how writers sought to respond to the nature of London. Drawing on literary and architectural theory and psychoanalysis, Julian Wolfreys looks at a variety of nineteenth-century writings to consider various literary modes of productions as responses to the city. Beginning with an introductory survey of the variety of literary representations and responses to the city, Writing London follows the shaping of the urban consciousness from Blake to Dickens, through Shelley, Barbauld, Byron, De Quincey, Engels and Wordsworth. It concludes with an Afterword which, in developing insights into the relationship between writing and the city, questions the heritage industry's reinvention of London, while arguing for a new understanding of the urban spirit. Front Matter....Pages i-1 Introduction: imagining London or, Rainbird was sure of it....Pages 3-29 Blake’s London • London’s Blake: an Introduction to the Spirit of London or, on the way to Apocalypse....Pages 31-59 ‘Half lost in night’: envisioning London or, Romantic poetry’s Capital snapshots....Pages 61-93 Citephobia • the Anxiety of representation or, fear and loathing in London: Thomas De Quincey, Friedrich Engels, and William Wordsworth....Pages 95-139 Dickensian architextures or, the city and the ineffable....Pages 141-179 Fragments, supplements, palimpsests: a photo-essay....Pages 181-193 Afterword: ‘the only game in town’ or, London to come....Pages 195-208 Back Matter....Pages 209-249 How did writers in the nineteenth century come to terms with the phenomenon of London, the world's largest and most rapidly expanding city? How did they perceive the 'modern Babylon' in all its excesses and chaos, and how did the rapid change and development of London affect or alter their prose and poetry? Did London, in fact, help to shape modern literary conceptions and representations of urban space and its effects on our lives in cities, as city-dwellers? Drawing on literary theory, psychoanalysis and architectural theory, Julian Wolfreys looks at a variety of responses in poetry, fiction and autobiographical writing to consider the apocalyptic, the labyrinthine and the phobic modes of production among numerous reactions to the city These questions are raised in Writing London, which asks the reader to consider how writers in the first half of the nineteenth century sought to respond to the nature of London, a city quite unlike any other during this period