An Anthology of London in Literature, 1558–1914

1 Period 1:​ London—Birth of a New Order (1558–1659)
INTRODUCTION
1.​1 John Lyly:​ London the Ideal City
1.​2 Donald Lupton:​ London Bridge
1.​3 Robert Herrick Laments Leaving His Native London
1.​4 Herrick’s Joyful Return to London
1.​5 John Webster:​ The Decrepitude of Some London Buildings
1.​6 John Donne:​ The Lively Streets of London
1.​7 William Habington:​ In Praise of London in the Long Vacation
DRAMA AND THE THEATRE
1.​8 Philip Stubbes:​ Puritan Objections to Stage Plays
1.​9 Shakespeare:​ “On Your Imaginary Forces Work”
1.​10 Shakespeare:​ The Best Actors Are but Shadows
THE PLAGUE
1.​11 Thomas Nashe:​ “Adieu, Farewell, Earth’s Bliss”
1.​12 Thomas Dekker:​ The Plague and Its Victims in 1603
THE COURT AND COURTIERS
1.​13 Sir John Davies:​ “Our Glorious English Court’s Divine Image”
1.​14 Edmund Spenser:​ Another View of Love at Court
1.​15 Anon.​:​ A Courtier
1.​16 Thomas Dekker:​ “How a Young Gallant Should Behave Himself in an Ordinary”
WHO SHOULD ’SCAPE WHIPPING?​
1.​17 John Earle:​ A Shopkeeper
1.​18 Thomas Middleton:​ A Goldsmith Gulled
1.​19 Barnabe Rich:​ Vanity Fair
1.​20 Thomas Harman:​ An Abraham Man
1.​21 Robert Greene:​ Beware of Pickpockets
1.​22 Middleton:​ Roaring Girls
1.​23 Ben Jonson:​ Pickpockets at Bartholomew Fair
1.​24 John Earle:​ A Prison
1.​25 Donald Lupton:​ Bedlam
1.​26 Dekker and Middleton:​ Entertainment Provided by the Inmates of Bedlam
THE COMING OF THE COMMONWEALTH
1.​27 Andrew Marvell:​ The Execution of Charles I
1.​28 John Evelyn:​ “The Funeral Sermon of Preaching”
1.​29 Evelyn:​ Persecution of Royalist Churchgoers
References
2 Period 2:​ London in the Enlightenment (1660–1780)
INTRODUCTION
2.​1 Celia Fiennes:​ Some Topographical Features of London
2.​2 Daniel Defoe:​ London Surging in Size
THE RESTORATION
2.​3 John Evelyn:​ Charles II’s Triumphal Entry into London
2.​4 Evelyn:​ Bodies of Cromwell and Others Exhumed
2.​5 Evelyn:​ Gambling and Debauchery at the Court of Charles II
2.​6 Evelyn:​ James II’s Ill-Timed Feast for the Venetian Ambassadors
THE GREAT PLAGUE
2.​7 Samuel Pepys Describes the Plague
2.​8 Daniel Defoe’s Imaginative Reconstruction of the Great Plague
THE GREAT FIRE
2.​9 John Dryden:​ London on Fire
2.​10 Pepys’ Buried Treasures
2.​11 Defoe:​ London Before and After the Fire
INSTITUTIONS
2.​12 John Evelyn:​ Some Unusual Proceedings of the Royal Society
2.​13 Ned Ward:​ The Rebuilding of St Paul’s Cathedral
2.​14 Joseph Addison:​ The Royal Exchange
2.​15 Ned Ward:​ Crowds at the Entrance to the Royal Exchange
2.​16 Defoe:​ Westminster Abbey
ALL THAT LIFE CAN AFFORD
2.​17 Samuel Johnson in Praise of London
2.​18 John Gay:​ The Labyrinthine Streets of London
2.​19 Gay on Pall Mall
2.​20 Jonathan Swift:​ “A Description of a City Shower”
2.​21 Tobias Smollett:​ Ranelagh and Vauxhall Gardens
2.​22 Hannah More:​ The Bluestocking Circle
2.​23 Ned Ward:​ Pork Sellers at Bartholomew Fair
2.​24 Benjamin Franklin:​ “Work, the Curse of the Drinking Classes”
A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE
2.​25 John Gay:​ Perils of London by Night
2.​26 James Smith:​ Sex-Workers in the Strand
2.​27 Daniel Defoe on Shoplifting
2.​28 Defoe:​ Newgate Prison
2.​29 Samuel Richardson:​ An Execution at Tyburn
2.​30 Samuel Johnson:​ The Crime of Poverty
2.​31 Thomas Holcoft:​ The Gordon Riots
References
3 Period 3:​ London—New Riches, New Squalor (1781–1870)
INTRODUCTION
AN OPENING MISCELLANY
3.​1 Charlotte Bronte:​ London as Life and Freedom
3.​2 Mary Robinson:​ “London’s Summer Morning”
3.​3 Charles Dickens:​ A London ‘Pea-Souper’
3.​4 William Cobbett:​ The Great Wen
3.​5 William Wordsworth:​ Alienation and Anonymity
3.​6 Alfred, Lord Tennyson:​ The Noise of Life Begins Again
3.​7 William Blake:​ “Marks of Woe”
3.​8 Charles Dickens:​ A Sunday in London
3.​9 William Makepeace Thackeray:​ “Going to See a Man Hanged.​”
DELIGHTS AND BEAUTIES
3.​10 Thomas Hood:​ Let’s All Go Down the Strand
3.​11 John Ruskin Recalls a Childhood Paradise at Herne Hill
3.​12 William Wordsworth:​ “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”
3.​13 Matthew Arnold, “Lines Written in Kensington Gardens”
3.​14 George Borrow on Cheapside
3.​15 Frederick Locker-Lampson, “St.​ James’s Street,” 1867
3.​16 Charles Dickens:​ Going Up the River
3.​17 Nathaniel Hawthorne:​ A London Suburb
INSTITUTIONS
3.​18 William Blake:​ St Paul’s Cathedral on Holy Thursday
3.​19 Thomas De Quincey:​ Tourists Must Pay to See the Sights of St Paul’s Cathedral
3.​20 Charles Dickens:​ The Building of a Railway
3.​21 Henry Mayhew and George Cruikshank:​ The Great Exhibition and the Crystal Palace
3.​22 John Ruskin:​ The Crystal Palace
3.​23 Thomas de Quincey:​ The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Destroyed
3.​24 Benjamin Disraeli:​ A View of Politicians
MIDDLE CLASS LIFE
3.​25 Anthony Trollope:​ Publicans and Sinners
3.​26 Alfred, Lord Tennyson:​ “Ode Sung at the Opening of the International Exhibition” (1862)
3.​27 Charles Dickens:​ A London Hackney-Coach
3.​28 Charles Lamb:​ “The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple”
3.​29 Wilkie Collins:​ A Child’s Sunday in London
3.​30 Elizabeth Gaskell:​ Haste to the Wedding
3.​31 Charles Dickens:​ Dinner in Harley Street
3.​32 Charles Dickens:​ Bran-New People
3.​33 William Thackeray:​ Wars and Rumours of Wars
3.​34 Robert Smith Surtees, Sponge in the City
3.​35 Herman Melville:​ The Temple
3.​36 William Makepeace Thackeray:​ “Great City Snobs”
3.​37 Elizabeth Barrett Browning:​ A Writing Woman
WORKING-CLASS LIFE
3.​38 Leigh Hunt:​ A London Waiter
3.​39 Henry Mayhew:​ Covent Garden Market
3.​40 Charles Dickens:​ Bleeding Heart Yard
3.​41 Charles Kingsley:​ The Making of a Chartist
3.​42 William Morris:​ “Prologue:​ The Wanderers”
3.​43 Henry Mayhew:​ “The Narrative of a Gay Woman”
3.​44 Thomas De Quincey:​ “Preliminary Confessions”
3.​45 Dante Gabriel Rossetti:​ “Jenny”
3.​46 Christina Rossetti, ‘In an Artist’s Studio’
3.​47 Thomas Hardy:​ “The Ruined Maid”
References
4 Period 4:​ London—Capital of Empire, 1871–1914
INTRODUCTION
AN OPENING MISCELLANY
4.​1 Thomas Hardy, “Snow in the Suburbs”
4.​2 Henry James, a Saturday Evening Stroll
4.​3 Lionel Johnson:​ “By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross”
4.​4 George Moore:​ A Train Journey
DELIGHTS AND BEAUTIES
4.​5 Emily Constance Cook:​ The Respectable Grime of Ages
4.​6 Henry James:​ The Appeal of the Great City
4.​7 Oscar Wilde, “Impression du Matin”
4.​8 H.​ G.​ Wells:​ An Evening in Hyde Park
4.​9 Robert Bridges, “London Snow”
THE AESTHETIC MOVEMENT
4.​10 Oscar Wilde:​ “London Models”
4.​11 Vernon Lee:​ The Mazes of Aesthetic London
4.​12 George Moore:​ Bohemian Life in Mayfair
4.​13 George Gissing:​ A Struggling Writer
INSTITUTIONS
4.​14 William S.​ Gilbert:​ The House of Peers
4.​15 Anthony Trollope:​ The House of Commons
4.​16 George Gissing:​ The Crystal Palace Park
4.​17 Arnold Bennett:​ A London Bank
4.​18 C.​ W.​ Murphy:​ “I Live in Trafalgar Square”
THE THAMES
4.​19 Henry James:​ A Steamer Down the Thames
4.​20 Joseph Conrad:​ Sunset on the Thames
MIDDLE CLASS LIFE
4.​21 George Eliot:​ A House by the Thames
4.​22 Margaret Oliphant:​ The Painter and the Philistine
4.​23 George Gissing:​ The Women’s Movement
4.​24 Mary Augusta Ward:​ A Politician and His Wife
4.​25 Lady St Helier:​ Politics and the Music-Hall
4.​26 George and Weedon Grossmith:​ Nobody Is Invited to a Ball
WORKING-CLASS LIFE
4.​27 George Gissing:​ Supreme Ugliness in the Caledonian Road
4.​28 Joseph Conrad:​ Bombs and Pornography
4.​29 Israel Zangwill:​ A Child of the Ghetto
4.​30 D.​ H.​ Lawrence:​ Outcasts of Waterloo Bridge
4.​31 Amy Levy:​ “Ballade of an Omnibus”
4.​32 Arthur Morrison:​ A Slum
4.​33 Baroness Emmuska Orczy:​ Death on the Tube
4.​34 Virginia Woolf:​ Leaving London
AFTER LONDON
4.​35 Richard Jefferies:​ Drowned London
EPILOGUE: TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY
4.​36 Beatrix Potter:​ Town Mouse and Country Mouse
References
Further Reading
Part 1:​ Historical Contexts
Part 2:​ Literary Contexts
Index