Reading London's Suburbs From Charles Dickens to Zadie Smith [Paperback]

A study of London suburban-set writing, exploring the links between place and fiction. This book charts a picture of evolving themes and concerns around the legibility and meaning of habitat and home for the individual, and the serious challenges that suburbia sets for literature.Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction: 'Where is Clapham? Does Clapham even exist?': Suburban Invisibility 1. HouselessHomelessHopeless! : Suburbs, Slums and Ghosts 1830  1870 2. 'A World of Mud and Fog': The High Victorian and Edwardian Suburb, 1880  1914 3. 'The Third England': Suburban Fiction and Modernity, 1918  1939 4. 'Your Environment Makes as Little Sense as your Life': Post-War Suburbia 1945-1980 5. 'I Tried to Work Out Where I Was': Contemporary Suburbia Conclusion: 'All Stories are Spatial Stories' Notes BibliographyDespite the countless studies that have been published on London and its geographical and cultural make-up, Ged Pope is clearly correct in identifying the city's suburbs as an as yet under-researched area. His volume sets out to address this gap by adopting a very broad perspective, both in terms of the time frame (as indicated in the volume's subtitle) and with regard to the kinds of texts selected. (Merle T?nnies, Anglistik, Vol. 28 (1), 2017)

Ged Pope teaches on the English Literature degree course at London Metropolitan University.