Imagined Londons

Edited by Pamela K. Gilbert

Subjects: British Studies
Paperback : 9780791455029, 267 pages, September 2002
Hardcover : 9780791455012, 267 pages, September 2002

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Table of contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction. IMAGINING LONDONS
Pamela K. Gilbert

1. THE VICTORIAN SOCIAL BODY AND URBAN CARTOGRAPHY
Pamela K. Gilbert

2. OTHER LONDONERS: RACE AND CLASS IN PLAYS OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY LONDON LIFE
Heidi J. Holder

3. "MEN IN PETTICOATS": BORDER CROSSINGS IN THE QUEER CASE OF MR. BOULTON AND MR. PARK
Morris B. Kaplan

4. ROMANCING THE CITY: ARTHUR SYMONS AND THE SPATIAL POLITICS OF AESTHETICS IN 1890s LONDON
Michelle Sipe

5. THE METROPOLE AS ANTIPODES: AUSTRALIAN WOMEN IN LONDON AND CONSTRUCTING NATIONAL IDENTITY
Angela Woollacott

6. MODERNIST SPACE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF UNDERGROUND LONDON
David L. Pike

7. LONDON AND THE TOURIST IMAGINATION
David Gilbert and Fiona Henderson

8. BREAD AND (ROCK) CIRCUSES: SITES OF SONIC CONFLICT IN LONDON
Alexei Monroe

9. THE POLITICAL CONSTRUCTION OF DIASPORIC COMMUNITIES IN THE GLOBAL CITY
John Eade, Isabelle Fremeaux, and David Garbin

10. LONELY LONDONER: V. S. NAIPAUL AND "THE GOD OF THE CITY"
Gautam Premnath

11. UNDOING LONDON OR, URBAN HAUNTS: THE FRACTURING OF REPRESENTATION IN THE 1990s
Julian Wolfreys

12. LONDON 2000: THE MILLENNIAL IMAGINATION IN A CITY OF MONUMENTS
Michael Levenson

List of Contributors

Index

Explores the various representations and imaginations of London in literature and popular culture, from Victorian times to the present day.

Description

Imagined Londons explores the diverse ways that Britain's "global city" has been imagined and represented in literature, history, the arts, and popular culture, from the mid–nineteenth century to the present day. American and British contributors examine a variety of topics, ranging from poetry to architecture, from dance music to gay pornography, from "tube" maps to the role of Bangladeshi communities in shaping contemporary London politics. Broadly interdisciplinary and deeply attentive to London's historical diversity, the book is unified by its attention to a single question: How have the many imaginations and representations of London shaped—and been shaped by—history and culture? The answers provided within this volume offer the chance to view London in surprising new ways.

Pamela K. Gilbert is Associate Professor of English at the University of Florida. She is the author of Disease, Desire, and the Body in Victorian Women's Popular Novels and the coeditor (with Marlene Tromp and Aeron Haynie) of Beyond Sensation: Mary Elizabeth Braddon in Context, also published by SUNY Press.

Reviews

"…lively, readable, and eclectic. " — Albion

"Imagined Londons affords a vivid exploration of the city's numerous geographical, textual, cultural, and artistic landscapes. Unlike much contemporary criticism—cultural, literary, or otherwise—this is a genuinely absorbing read, a page-turner, if you will. It has provided me with new accents and perspectives on a city that I visit often and that I have come to adore. " — Kenneth Womack, coeditor of Mapping the Ethical Turn: A Reader in Ethics, Culture, and Literary Theory

"The authors draw on literary, visual, and archival evidence, and make analytical arguments as well as descriptive cases for the complexity of the urban landscape. This is serious scholarship, but it's also clearly written and would serve a variety of audiences well, including general readers with an interest in London. " — Antoinette Burton, editor of Politics and Empire in Victorian Britain: A Reader

"As a Victorianist, I would have thought I'd only have wanted to read the first few essays, but the later pieces were so compelling that I was eager to keep turning the pages. I imagine this book would cross over to an educated popular readership. It's a text that current London residents or ex-Londoners would particularly enjoy. " — Talia Schaffer, author of The Forgotten Female Aesthetes: Literary Culture in Late-Victorian England