The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of London

London has provided the setting and inspiration for a host of literary works in English from canonical masterpieces to the popular and ephemeral. Drawing upon a variety of methods and materials the essays in this volume explore the London of Langland and the Peasants'' Rebellion of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan stage of Pepys and the Restoration coffee house of Dickens and Victorian wealth and poverty of Conrad and the Empire of Woolf and the wartime Blitz of Naipaul and postcolonial immigration and of contemporary globalism. Contributions from historians art historians theorists and media specialists as well as leading literary scholars exemplify current approaches to genre gender studies book history performance studies and urban studies. In showing how the tradition of English literature is shaped by representations of London this volume also illuminates the relationship between the literary imagination and the society of one of the world''s greatest cities.