Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan

Writing London

The Trace of the Urban Text from Blake to Dickens

  • Book
  • © 1998

Overview

Authors:
  1. Julian Wolfreys
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-1
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: imagining London or, Rainbird was sure of it

    • Julian Wolfreys
    Pages 3-29

  3. Blake’s London • London’s Blake: an Introduction to the Spirit of London or, on the way to Apocalypse

    • Julian Wolfreys
    Pages 31-59

  4. ‘Half lost in night’: envisioning London or, Romantic poetry’s Capital snapshots

    • Julian Wolfreys
    Pages 61-93

  5. Citephobia • the Anxiety of representation or, fear and loathing in London: Thomas De Quincey, Friedrich Engels, and William Wordsworth

    • Julian Wolfreys
    Pages 95-139

  6. Dickensian architextures or, the city and the ineffable

    • Julian Wolfreys
    Pages 141-179

  7. Fragments, supplements, palimpsests: a photo-essay

    • Julian Wolfreys
    Pages 181-193

  8. Afterword: ‘the only game in town’ or, London to come

    • Julian Wolfreys
    Pages 195-208

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 209-249
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

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.

Reviews

'Writing London makes a vital contribution to a growing field of interest in urban literature.' - Jennifer Davis Michael, The Wadsworth Circle

'Writing London is a brilliant book...Writing London conveys an excitement endowed by passion and intellectual risk, and more such studies of the nineteenth century would be welcome.' - Isobel Armstrong, Times Literary Supplement

'Writing London is an absorbing and lively study, which can usefully be added to the great flood of literature concerning the city.' - Peter Ackroyd, Times

About the author

Julian Wolfreys is Professor of Modern Literature and Culture at Loughborough University, UK. He was previously Professor in Literature at the University of Florida, USA. His teaching and research is concerned with 19th- and 20th-century British literary and cultural studies, literary theory, the poetics and politics of identity, and the idea of the city. He is the series editor of Transitions and has written many course texts for Literature students, notably The English Literature Companion .

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation