The Essential Guide to London Writing
What do writers such as Charles Dickens and Peter Ackroyd, Iain Sinclair and Robert Louis Stevenson have in common? The answer lies in the use these authors make of London as a fictional setting. Yet in these works and in those of other London writers the city is much more than merely a backdrop, instead becoming a character in its own right and creating a sense of place that is both a reflection and a reworking of the city. Here London is presented as a living organism, a huge and mysterious labyrinth, and the source of endless imagination. A whole world is contained by the city and within it the entire spectrum of human experience. From Bleak House to Hawksmoor, from Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to White Chappell Scarlet Tracings, London has continued to generate a series of fantastic visions. The humorous and the tragic, the grotesque and the bizarre, everything is possible here.
