London in fiction
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Many works of fiction are set in London, the capital city of England.
Folklore
- Arthurian legends
- Robin Hood
- Dick Whittington and His Cat
Early fiction
- Geoffrey Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales (late 14th century)
- Daniel Defoe - A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), Moll Flanders (1722)
19th century fiction
- Many of Charles Dickens's most famous novels are at least partially set in London, including Oliver Twist (1838), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853), Little Dorrit (1857), A Tale Of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1861), Our Mutual Friend (1865), and The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870).
- William Makepeace Thackeray - Vanity Fair (1847)
- Jules Verne - Around the World in Eighty Days (French: Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours) (1872)
- Henry James - The Princess Casamassima (1886), A London Life (1888), What Maisie Knew (1897), In the Cage (1898)
- Robert Louis Stevenson - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
- Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
- H. G. Wells - The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898)
- Somerset Maugham - Liza of Lambeth (1897)
- Bram Stoker's - Dracula (1897) comes to London in order to seduce Mina Harker.
- Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Holmes live at 221B Baker Street - a fictional address since Baker Street was much shorter in Victorian times. The Docklands area plays a large part in The Sign of Four.
- George Gissing's novels are almost exclusively set in London, including The Nether World (1889), New Grub Street (1891) and The Odd Women (1893).
- Irishman George Moore also wrote an "English" novel mainly set in London, Esther Waters (1894).
20th century fiction
- Joseph Conrad - The Secret Agent (1907)
- Marie Belloc Lowndes - The Lodger (1913)
- D. H. Lawrence - Sons and Lovers (1913)
- P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster novels (1919 onwards). Wooster lives mainly in London, and is a member of the Drones Club.
- Virginia Woolf - Mrs Dalloway (1925)
- T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land makes frequent reference to the Unreal City.
- Chesterton's allegorical works The Man Who Was Thursday and The Napoleon of Notting Hill both feature surreal depictions of London.
- Evelyn Waugh - Vile Bodies
- Aldous Huxley - Brave New World (1932)
- P. L. Travers - Mary Poppins (1964). Takes place on 17 Cherry Tree Lane and at the Bank of England.
- Patrick Hamilton - 20,000 Streets Under The Sky (1935)
- George Orwell - Keep The Aspidistra Flying (1936)
- Cameron McCabe - The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor (1937)
- Patrick Hamilton - Hangover Square (1941)
- Patrick White - The Living and the Dead (1941
- Norman Collins - London Belongs to Me (1945)
- Elizabeth Bowen - The Heat of the Day (1949)
- George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
- Agatha Christie - Crooked House (1949)
- John Wyndham - The Day of the Triffids (1951)
- Graham Greene - The End of the Affair (1951) & The Destructors (1954)
- Samuel Selvon - Lonely Londoners (1955)
- Colin MacInnes's City of Spades (1957), Absolute Beginners (1959) and Mr Love and Justice (1960)
- Iris Murdoch - A Severed Head (1961)
- Muriel Spark - The Girls of Slender Means (1963)
- Doris Lessing - The Four-Gated City (1969)
- Michael Moorcock - The Jerry Cornelius stories (from 1969), Mother London (1988), King of the City (2000)
- Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
- Maureen Duffy - Capital (1975)
- Peter Ackroyd - The Great Fire of London (1982), Hawksmoor (1985), English Music (1992), The House of Doctor Dee (1993), Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994), The Clerkenwell Tales (2003), The Lambs of London (2004)
- Iain Banks - Walking on Glass (1985), Dead Air (2002)
- Martin Amis - Money (1984), London Fields (1989)
- Tom Clancy - Patriot Games (1987)
- Hanif Kureishi - The Buddha of Suburbia (1987) and Gabriel's Gift (2001)
- Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses (1989)
- Josephine Hart - Damage (1991)
- Bernice Rubens - A Solitary Grief (1991)
- Barbara Vine - King Solomon's Carpet (1991)
- Nick Hornby - Fever Pitch (1992), High Fidelity (1996), About a Boy (1998)
- Will Self - Grey Area (1996)
- Julian Barnes - Metroland (1997)
- Helen Fielding - Bridget Jones' Diary (1997)
- Anthony Frewin - London Blues (1997), set mainly in Soho at the time of the Profumo affair
- Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (1997) is set partly in real London, and partly in an alternative "London Below".
- Ian McEwan - Enduring Love (1997)
- Geoff Nicholson - Bleeding London (1997)
- J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (1997 onwards) features fictional London locations: the hidden Diagon Alley
and a Platform 9 3⁄4 at King's Cross.
- Kouta Hirano's Hellsing Manga (1997-2009) London being the story's main setting.
- Ronald Wright - A Scientific Romance (1997) features detailed descriptions of a ruined London in the year 2500.
- William Boyd - Armadillo (1998)
- Alan Moore - From Hell (1999) A graphic novel about the murders of London serial killer Jack the Ripper.
- William Sutcliffe - The Love Hexagon (2000)
21st-Century fiction
- Bernard Cornwell Gallows Thief (2001)
- Philip Reeve - Mortal Engines (2001), A Darkling Plain (2006) Fever Crumb (2009)
- Zadie Smith - White Teeth (2001)
- Miles Tredinnick - Topless, (2001)
- Bernadine Evaristo - The Emperor's Babe (2002)
- Owen Parry - Honor's Kingdom (2002)
- Dan Brown - The Da Vinci Code (2003)
- William Gibson - Pattern Recognition (2003)
- Zoë Heller - Notes on a Scandal (2003)
- Adam Thirlwell - Politics (2003)
- Neal Stephenson - The Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver (2003), The Confusion (2004), The System of the World (2004))
- Monica Ali - Brick Lane (2004)
- Ben Elton - Past Mortem (2004)
- A. N. Wilson - My Name Is Legion (2004)
- Nick Hornby - A Long Way Down (2005)
- Ian McEwan - Saturday (2005)
- Kia Abdullah - Life, Love and Assimilation (17 May 2006)
- Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal - Tourism (2006)
- Charles Finch - A Beautiful Blue Death (2007), The September Society (2008), The Fleet Street Murders (2009), A Stranger in Mayfair (2010)
- Mark Baxter and Paolo Hewitt - The Mumper (2007)
- Mary Novik - Conceit (2007)
- Charlie Fletcher The Stoneheart (2008), The Ironhand (2008), Silvertongue (2010)
- Anthony Horowitz - Stormbreaker, Eagle Strike, Scorpia, Ark Angel (2008)
- Ruth Rendell - Portobello (2008)
- Andrew Sanger - The J-Word (2008) - novel set in Jewish North-West London
- Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry (2009)
- Julia Stuart - The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise (2010)
- Benedict Jacka - Fated, Cursed, Taken (2012)
Nursery rhymes
Several nursery rhymes mention places in London.
- London Bridge is mentioned in London Bridge is falling down.
- Oranges and Lemons mentions several London Churches.
- Pop Goes the Weasel one version refers to the Eagle pub on the City Road.
External links
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