London: The Biography

Eighteenth-century London is replete with source material, from the poems and plays of John Gay to the engravings of William Hogarth. Any biography of Samuel Johnson or William Blake will provide a vision of the city in its general and particular circumstances. Specific mention, however, might be made of J. Boswell’s London Journal 1762-1763 edited by F.A. Pottle (London, 1950). The world of Addison and Steele can be discovered within the pages of Selections from the Tatler and the Spectator edited by A. Ross (London, 1982). The best general survey of the period is M.D. George’s London Life in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1925) while J. Summerson’s Georgian London (London, 1945) will clarify the reader’s mind on architectural matters. George Rudé’s Hanoverian London, 1714-1808 (London, 1971) remains a very important study. Of more specific interest is London in the Age of Industrialisation by L.D. Schwarz (Cambridge, 1992), while M. Waller’s 1700: Scenes from London Life (London, 2000) provides an intimate picture of ordinary life. Crime, death and punishment seem to emerge as objects of attention in eighteenth-century London; among the books devoted to them are P. Linebaugh’s The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in Eighteenth-Century London (London, 1991), and Death and the Metropolis by J. Landers (Cambridge, 1993); of related interest is I. McCalman’s Radical Underworld (Cambridge, 1988). John Gay’s London by W.H. Irving (Cambridge, 1923) is precise and informative, as is J. Uglow’s Hogarth: A Life and a World (London, 1997). The latter biography can be read alongside the edition of Hogarth’s Graphic Works edited with a commentary by R. Paulson (London, 1989). The Godwins and the Shelleys by W. St. Clair (London, 1989) provides more interesting source material on radical London, and S. Gardner’s The Tyger, the Lamb and the Terrible Desart (London, 1998) provides an approximation of the Blakean vision.