Exhibitions
Exhibitions > Literary London
Literary London
Over the centuries London has been the home of numerous authors and the setting of countless works of literature and has appeared periphally in many others. The display 'Literary London' accompanied a conference of that name, held at Senate House 7-9 July 2010.
The Workes of our Ancient and Lerned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
London: G. Bishop, 1602
[D.-L.L.] Bc.3 [Chaucer] fol.
Among the London connections in Chaucer’s work is the commencement at Southwark of the pilgrimage to Canterbury in The Canterbury Tales. Shown here is the second edition of Chaucer done by Thomas Speght (d. 1621), the most durable Chaucer editor to date. His introductory biography of Chaucer makes clear Chaucer’s own links to London.
The Maids Tragedie
3rd impression
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
London: printed by A.M. for R. Hawkins, 1630
[D.-L.L.] (XVII) Bc [Beaumont and Fletcher]
The Maids Tragedie, first published in 1610, is an example of early-seventeenth-century theatrical activity in London, the title page – like so many of the period – specifying: ‘as it hath beene diuers times acted at the Black-Friers by the Kings Maiesties Seruants’. Beaumont and Fletcher wrote just under half of their collaborative plays from about 1610 for the King’s Men at the Globe. The remainder were for other London companies, the Children of Paul’s and the Queen’s Revels company.
The Way of the World
William Congreve
London: J. Tonson, 1700
[S.L.] I [Congreve – 1700]
Displayed here is the first edition of William Congreve’s enduring comedy The Way of the World. As the title page records, it was first acted at the Lincoln’s Inn Theatre, which had been re-opened by Congreve’a company; other theatres to see premières of Congreve’s works were Drury Lane and the Haymarket. Later eighteenth-century editions in the Library no longer name the place of initial performance.
Boswell’s London Journal, 1762-1763
James Boswell; ed. by Frederick A. Pottle
London: Heinemann, 1951
[S.L.] I [Boswell – 1951]
James Boswell’s diary, bequeathed among other manuscripts to successive lairds of Auchinleck, was rediscovered among his private papers in the twentieth century and first published in 1950. The London section, the most popular part, covers among its topics lodgings, coffee houses, society, and theatrical performances and other entertainments.
This is no. 986 of a de luxe edition of 1,050 copies.
Evelina, or, A Young Lady’s Entrance into the World
Fanny Burney
London: T. Lowndes, 1778
[S.L.] I [Burney – 1778]
This volume is from the first edition of Evelina, Fanny Burney’s first work of mature fiction. At the time of writing Burney lived in London, where the literati with whom she associated included Hester Thrale, Hannah More and Samuel Johnson. Some of the novel’s plot takes place in London; Marylebone Gardens are mentioned specifically.
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
London: T. Egerton, 1813
[S.L.] I [Austen – 1813]
This is part of the first edition of one of the most famous novels in the English language, repeatedly translated, published, and dramatised. London features as the place where Bingley and his household stay after leaving Netherfield, as the home of Mr and Mrs Gardiner, visited by Jane Bennett, and as the city to which Mr Wickham and Lydia Bennett elope and are tracked down by the novel’s hero, Mr Darcy.
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
London: Chapman and Hall, 1859
[S.L.] I [Dickens – 1859]
A resident of London for much of his life, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) set some or all of many novels there, including A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby. Yet only in A Tale of Two Cities is London elevated to title status as one of the two cities in which the action takes place (the other is Paris). This is the first edition in book form.
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
London: Newnes, 1894
[S.L.] I [Doyle – 1894]
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) resided in London for a mere three years, from 1891 until 1894. His best-known hero, Sherlock Holmes, is, by contrast, a Londoner through and through, living in rooms on Baker Street. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes first appeared in the Strand Magazine; this is the first edition in book form.
The Strand Magazine, vol. 27
Jan. – June 1894
PR [Z – Strand]
Shown here is part of The Phoenix and the Carpet, by E. Nesbit (1858-1924), from its original serialisation in the Strand Magazine. The story features five middle-class children who live in London, and whose adventures include visiting a West End theatre and the Phoenix Fire Insurance Company. In the chapter shown, they arrive at Waterloo Station after holidays and discuss taking the train to Croydon.
Jessica’s First Prayer
Hesba Stretton
London: Religious Tract Society, [1900?]
Prize [Stretton]
Whereas E. Nesbit’s children are all firmly middle-class, Jessica’s First Prayer, first published in 1866, was a tremendously popular story about the daughter of a drunkard, a waif who lived in a London hayloft and was befriended by the owner of a coffee stall ‘in a screened and secluded corner of one of the many railway bridges which span the streets of London’.
The Forsyte Saga
John Galsworthy
London: Heinemann, 1922
[S.L.] II [Galsworthy – 1922]
The trilogy The Forsyte Saga and its sequels are what have ensured their author’s place in the history of English literature. The Forsytes are Londoners: ‘old Jolyon’, the head of the family, lives in Stanhope Gate; Soames in Montpellier Square; James in Park Lane; Timothy in the Bayswater Road. Other London sites mentioned include Sloane Street (where Bosinney has rooms), Marble Arch, Hyde Park Corner, Pall Mall and the City.
This is no. 235 of a signed, limited edition of 275 copies.
The History of the Abbey Church of St. Peter's Westminster, its Antiquities and Monuments
William Combe
London: R. Ackermann, 1812
[S.L.] IV [Ackermann - 1812] fol.
Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey is London’s most concentrated celebration of British writers. William Combe’s history of the Abbey, published sumptuously by Rudolph Ackermann, describes the monuments of those commemorated there by the early nineteenth century, transcribes the inscriptions, and sometimes adds biographical snippets about the writers.
Poems on the Underground
Ed. by Gerard Benson, Judith Chernaik and Cicely Herbert
London: Cassell, 1997
This is an anthology of poems ranging from anonymous verses to some by such famous poets as Robert Burns, Shelley and Shakespeare. They were written between the tenth century or earlier and the twentieth century, and cover a wide variety of subjects. What links them is that they were all pasted up on the London Underground.
London Poems on the Underground
Ed. by Gerard Benson, Judith Chernaik and Cicely Herbert
London: Cassell, 1996
These verses not only were plastered up in trains on London’s underground network, but have London as their theme, from William Dunbar’s fifteenth- or sixteenth-century poem ‘To the City of London’ to Grace Nichols’s ‘Like a Beacon’.
