London stories / edited by Jerry White.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

White, Jerry, 1949- editor.

Series:

Everyman's pocket classics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

London (England)--Fiction.

London (England).

Short stories, English.

London (England)--History.

London (England)--Description and travel.

Genre:

Short stories, English.

Short stories.

Fiction.

Physical Description:

432 pages ; 20 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.

Summary:

"London has the greatest literary tradition of any city in the world. Its roll call of storytellers includes cultural giants like Shakespeare, Defoe, and Dickens, and an innumerable host of writers of all sorts who sought to capture the essence of the place. Acclaimed historian Jerry White has collected some twenty-six stories to illustrate the extraordinary diversity of both London life and writing over the past four centuries, from Shakespeare's day to the present. These are stories of fact and fiction and occasionally something in between, some from well-known voices and others practically unknown. Here are dramatic views of such iconic events as the plague, the Great Fire of London, and the Blitz, but also William Thackeray's account of going to see a man hanged, Thomas De Quincey's friendship with a teenaged prostitute, and Doris Lessing's defense of the Underground. This literary London encompasses the famous Baker Street residence of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and the bombed-out moonscape of Elizabeth Bowen's wartime streets, Charles Dicken's treacherous River Thames and Frederick Treves's tragic Elephant Man. Graham Greene, Jean Rhys, Muriel Spark, and Hanif Kureishi are among the many great writers who give us their varied Londons here, revealing a city of boundless wealth and ragged squalor, of moving tragedy and riotous joy. (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)"-- Provided by publisher.

"An anthology of short fiction and nonfiction about the city of London from the past four centuries, edited by historian Jerry White"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

London, lying sicke of the plague (1603) / Thomas Dekker

The great fire of London (1666) / John Evelyn

A ragged boyhood" (1722) / Daniel Defoe

Love among the Methodists (1792) / James Lackington

A visit to Charlotte Cibber (1795) / Samuel Whyte

Ann of Oxford Street (1822) / Thomas de Quincey

Going to see a man hanged (1840) / William Makepeace Thackeray

Watercress Girl (1851) / Henry Mayhew

Down with the tide (1853) / Charles Dickens

The Walworth Jumpers (1876) / C. Maurice Davies

My first soireé (1891) / Eliza Lynn Linton

The adventure of the blue carbuncle (1892) / Arthur Conan Doyle

Christopherson (1906) / George Gissing

The fetching of Susan (1912) / Andom [Alfred Walter Barrett]

The elephant man (1923) / Frederick Treves

A Forsyte encounters the people, 1917 (1930) / John Galsworthy

A little place off the Edgware Road (1939) / Graham Greene

Good evening, Mrs Craven (1942) / Mollie Panter-Downes

The wall (1944) / William Sansom

Mysterious Kôr (1945) / Elizabeth Bowen

Coming to London (1957) / J.B. Priestley

Tigers are better-looking (1964) / Jean Rhys

Daisy Overend (1967) / Muriel Spark

In defence of the underground (1992) / Doris Lessing

Islington (1997) / Irma Kurtz

The umbrella (1999) / Hanif Kureishi.

Notes:

"This is a Borzoi book"-- Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9780375712463

0375712461

OCLC:

856053441

Online:

Cover image