This book stages a series of interventions and inventions of urban space between 1880 and 1930 in key literary texts of the period. Making sharp distinctions between modernity and modernism, the volume reassesses the city as a series of singular sites irreducible to stable identities, concluding with an extended reading of The Waste Land .
'Julian Wolfreys' series of Writing London books goes from strength to strength. This volume contains admirable readings of the way a series of writers 'invent' London by way of telling stories about particular locations within it - including wonderful chapters on London at night, on Richard Marsh's The Beetle , on Amy Levy and Arnold Bennett (he revived an interest in Bennett for me!), on John Berger and Iain Sinclair, and, last, on Eliot's The Waste Land . The Eliot chapter is by far the best essay on The Waste Land I have ever read. It is a genuine tour de force, as is the whole book.' - Professor J. Hillis Miller, Distinguished Professor, University of California, Irvine, USA