london in literature course 2024

London in Literature: 1778 to 1948

Live online course, 18 September to 27 November 2024

In recent years the concept of ‘Britishness’ has been passionately contested within British politics and public debate. For geographer Keith Hoggart, the ‘idea of London is central to the self-image of the British people’. Literature set in London offers a glimpse of London at a certain time, but, more powerfully, it offers an idea of London that has shaped the ways in which the British – and, of course, Londoners and the English – are identified and identify themselves. London’s identity cycles between its history and its literature, as events shape London’s character, and thereby the fiction it inspires. But then, such fiction influences how London, the Londoner, the English person and the British might then be conceived. 

London was founded as Londinium in 43 CE  by the colonising Romans. Its citizens have come from all nations and places, particularly during the last 200 years; it is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. London’s culture is deeply rooted in traditional English class and gender codes still visible today. These have been repeatedly challenged and updated by many forces, including migration, two world wars, terrorism and political movements such as the suffragettes. London is dynamic, exciting, complex, sometimes dangerous or tragic, sometimes hopeful. All this goes into the literature of this great city.

By studying the six novels on this course we observe London as it changes from the eighteenth century until World War II, and we also witness an ever-changing notion of London that constantly feeds back into national identity. We will ask: How is London characterised in this novel? What might this mean for a sense of identity – British, English, or something else? This course explores these compelling political and social questions.  

Set books

• Fanny Burney, Evelina (1778)
• Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861)
• Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
• Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (1907)
• Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925)
• Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day (1948)

Daniel Defoe described London of the eighteenth century as ‘a great and monstrous Thing’, vividly capturing its contradictions of grand stature and chilling mystery. We begin with Frances Burney's Evelina (1778) and, like its titular character, we step wide-eyed into the perplexing class and gender codes of the fashionable places of late eighteenth century London. London’s potential for monstrosity links the next three texts of the course, as we explore characters corrupted to various degrees in Great Expectations (1861), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and The Secret Agent (1907). Overweening social ambition, terrorism, and murder are all fostered by London living - alongside generosity, compassion, and creativity.

In 1925, Virginia Woolf opens Mrs Dalloway with Clarissa’s delight in London’s vibrancy as she steps out into Westminster on a beautiful June morning: ‘What a lark! What a plunge!’ But the book also explores the painful legacies of the First World War, visible on the sunlit streets of London. 

By the early 1940s, during the Second World War, The Heat of the Day (1948) conjures London as a place of darkly intimate moral complexity, as Stella must discern if her lover is, or is not, a spy for the axis powers.

Walking London’s streets with its ingenues, terrorists, high-society wives, murderers, and potential spies, we will attempt to better understand this city, and the identities it has inspired and cultivated across 160 years – English, British, cosmopolitan, Londoner, and more. 

The course is taught by Dr Angela Harris. Sessions are live online via Zoom. 

Six sessions, Wednesdays, fortnightly, from 18 September until 27 November 2024, 6.00 pm to 8.00 pm British time. 

This is the first of two courses on London in Literature. The second course (in 2025) will study works from the 1950s to the present, from Muriel Spark and Sam Selvon to Zadie Smith. Bookings open soon.