The Swarming Streets

Book excerpt: Ranging from the turn of the nineteenth century to the last few years of the twentieth century, The Swarming Streets explores the representation of London in the last century through some of the major writers who have made it the foundation of their work. The natural companion to recent major histories and biographies of the metropolis, students and researchers alike will find major new essays on Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson, Storm Jameson, E. Nesbit, Julian Barnes, Iain Sinclair, Graham Swift, B. S. Johnson, and Andrea Levy and others. Drawing on a rich variety of critical approaches, each essay is distinct as well as contributing to an overall analysis of literary representations of twentieth-century London.