An Anthology of London in Literature, 1558-1914: 'Flower of Cities All'

PART ONE. 1. John Lyly: London the Ideal City.- 2. Donald Lupton: London Bridge.- 3. Robert Herrick Laments Leaving his Native London.- 4. Herrick's Joyful Return to London.- 5. John Webster: The Decrepitude of Some London Buildings.- 6. John Donne: The Lively Streets of London.- 7. William Habington: In Praise of London in the Long Vacation.- 8. Philip Stubbes: Puritan Objections to Stage Plays.- 9. Shakespeare: "On your imaginary forces work".- 10. Shakespeare: The best actors are but shadows.- 11. Thomas Nashe: "Adieu, farewell, earth's bliss".- 12. Thomas Dekker: The Plague and its Victims in 1603.- 13. Sir John Davies: "Our glorious English court's divine image".- 14. Edmund Spenser: Another View of Love at Court.- 15. Anon: A Courtier.- 16. Thomas Dekker: "How a young gallant should behave himself in an ordinary".- 17. John Earle: A Shopkeeper.- 18. Thomas Middleton: A Goldsmith Gulled.- 19. Barnabe Rich: Vanity Fair.- 20. Thomas Harman: An Abraham man.- 21. Robert Greene: Beware of Pickpockets.- 22. Middleton: Roaring Girls.- 23. Ben Jonson: Pickpockets at Bartholomew Fair.- 24. John Earle: A Prison.- 25. Donald Lupton: Bedlam.- 26. Dekker and Middleton: Entertainment Provided by the Inmates of Bedlam.- 27. Andrew Marvell: The Execution of Charles I.- 28. John Evelyn: "The funeral sermon of preaching".- 29. Evelyn: Persecution of Royalist Churchgoers.- PART TWO. 1. Celia Fiennes: Some Topographical Features of London.- 2. Daniel Defoe: London Surging in Size.- 3. John Evelyn: Charles II's Triumphal Entry into London.- 4. Evelyn: Bodies of Cromwell and Others Exhumed.- 5. Evelyn: Gambling and Debauchery at the Court of Charles II.- 6. Evelyn: James II's Ill-Timed Feast for the Venetian Ambassadors.- 7. Samuel Pepys Describes the Plague.- 8. Daniel Defoe's Imaginative Reconstruction of the Great Plague.- 9. John Dryden: London on Fire.- 10. Pepys' Buried Treasure.- 11. Defoe: London Before and After the Fire.- 12. John Evelyn: Some Unusual Proceedings of the Royal Society.- 13. Ned Ward: The Rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral.- 14. Joseph Addison: The Royal Exchange.- 15. Ned Ward: Crowds at the Entrance to the Royal Exchange.- 16. Defoe: Westminster Abbey.- 17. Samuel Johnson in Praise of London.- 18. John Gay: The Labyrinthine Streets of London.- 19. Gay on Pall Mall.- 20. Jonathan Swift: "A Description of a City Shower".- 21. Tobias Smollett: Ranelagh and Vauxhall Gardens.- 22. Hannah More: The Bluestocking Circle.- 23. Ned Ward: Pork Sellers at Bartholomew Fair.- 24. Benjamin Franklin: "Work, the Curse of the Drinking Classes".- 25. John Gay: Perils of London by Night.- 26. James Smith: Sex-Workers in the Strand.- 27. Daniel Defoe on Shoplifting.- 28. Defoe: Newgate Prison.- 29. Samuel Richardson: An Execution at Tyburn.- 30. Samuel Johnson: The Crime of Poverty.- 31. Thomas Holcoft: The Gordon Riots.- PART THREE. 1. Charlotte Bronte: London as Life and Freedom.- 2. Mary Robinson: "London's Summer Morning".- 3. Charles Dickens: A London "Pea-Souper".- 4. William Cobbett: The Great Wen.- 5. William Wordsworth: Alienation and Anonymity.- 6. Alfred, Lord Tennyson: The Noise of Life Begins Again.- 7. William Blake: "Marks of Woe".- 8. Charles Dickens: A Sunday in London.- 9. William Makepeace Thackeray: "Going to See a Man Hanged".- 10. Thomas Hood: Let's All Go Down the Strand.- 11. John Ruskin recalls a childhood paradise at Herne Hill.- 12. William Wordsworth: "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept 2, 1802".- 13. Matthew Arnold, "Lines Written in Kensington Gardens".- 14. George Borrow on Cheapside.- 15. Frederick Locker-Lampson, "St James's Street", 1867.- 16. Charles Dickens: Going Up the River.- 17. Nathaniel Hawthorne: a London Suburb.- 18. William Blake: St Paul's Cathedral on Holy Thursday.- 19. Thomas de Quincey: Tourists Must Pay to See the Sights of St Paul's Cathedral.- 20. Charles Dickets: The Building of a Railway.- 21. Henry Mayhew and George Cruikshank: The Great Exhibition and the Crystal Pa