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Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture Dickens’s London Perception, Subjectivity and Phenomenal Urban Multiplicity Julian Wolfreys Dickens’s London Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture Series Editor: Julian Wolfreys Volumes available in the series: In Lady Audley’s Shadow: Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Victorian Literary Genres Saverio Tomaiuolo 978 0 7486 4115 4 Hbk Blasted Literature: Victorian Political Fiction and the Shock of Modernism Deaglán Ó Donghaile 978 0 7486 4067 6 Hbk William Morris and the Idea of Community: Romance, History and Propaganda, 1880–1914 Anna Vaninskaya 978 0 7486 4149 9 Hbk 1895: Drama, Disaster and Disgrace in Late Victorian Britain Nicholas Freeman 978 0 7486 4056 0 Hbk Determined Spirits: Eugenics, Heredity and Racial Regeneration in Anglo-American Spiritualist Writing, 1848–1930 Christine Ferguson 978 0 7486 3965 6 Hbk Dickens’s London: Perception, Subjectivity and Phenomenal Urban Multiplicity Julian Wolfreys 978 0 7486 4040 9 Hbk Visit the Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture web page at www.euppublishing.com/series/ecve Also available: Victoriographies – A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Writing, 1790–1914, edited by Julian Wolfreys ISSN: 2044–2416 www.eupjournals.com/vic Dickens’s London Perception, Subjectivity and Phenomenal Urban Multiplicity Julian Wolfreys © Julian Wolfreys, 2012 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 10.5/13 Sabon by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 4040 9 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 5603 5 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 0 7486 5605 9 (epub) ISBN 978 0 7486 5604 2 (Amazon ebook) The right of Julian Wolfreys to be identifi ed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents List of Illustrations and Maps vii Series Editor’s Preface viii Abbreviations x Advertisement xii Acknowledgements xv Preface xvi Dickens’s London 1 Dickens, our Contemporary 201 Alternative Contents Enargia A Arrivals (and Returns): London, Whitechapel, Blackheath, Blackfriars, Windsor Terrace, City Road, The Strand, Drury Lane, Fleet Street, Buckingham Street, the Adelphi, Custom House [Lower Thames Street], the Monument, Fish-Street Hill, Saint Paul’s Cathedral 3 B Banking and Breakfast: Gray’s Inn Square, Temple Bar, Strand Lane 32 C Chambers: Holborn, Staple Inn, Furnival’s Inn 48 D Dismal: Little Britain, Smithfi elds, Saint Paul’s Cathedral 56 E Exteriors: Golden Square, Portland Place, Bryanston Square 60 vi Dickens’s London F Faded Gentility: Camden Town 63 G Gothic: Seven Dials, Walworth, Covent Garden, India House, Aldgate Pump, Whitechapel Church, Commercial Road, Wapping Old Stairs, St George’s in the East, Snow Hill, Newgate 67 H Heart: St Paul’s Cathedral 97 I Insolvent Court: Portugal Street, Lincoln’s Inn, Houndsditch, Tyburn, Whitechapel, St George’s Fields, Southwark 100 J Jaggers’s House: Gerrard Street, Soho 109 K Krook’s: by Lincoln’s Inn 114 L Life and Death: Snow Hill, the Saracen’s Head, Smithfi eld, Saint James’s Parish, Saint Sepulchre’s Church 120 M Melancholy: Leadenhall Street, Newgate, Lant Street, Borough, St George the Martyr 122 N Nocturnal: Millbank 129 O Obstructive: Tower Street Ward 131 P Poverty: Angel, Islington, St John’s Road, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Exmouth Street, Coppice Row, Hockley-in-the-Hole, Saffron Hill, Field Lane 132 Q Quiet: Soho Square, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Old Square 137 R Resignation: Todgers’s, somewhere adjacent to the Monument 147 S Spring Evenings: London 173 T Time: The City, Coram’s Fields 182 U Unfi nished: Stagg’s Gardens, Camden Town 187 V Voice: Brentford, the Borough 188 W Walking: St Martin’s Court, Covent Garden 192 X X marks the Spot: St Mary Axe 195 Notes 234 Bibliography 244 Index 250 List of Illustrations and Maps 1. The Adelphi (1780) 2 2. The Adelphi 2 3. Temple Bar 32 4. Temple Bar, Buckingham Street, the Adelphi 39 5. Staple Inn 48 6. Staple Inn, Coram’s Fields, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Gray’s Inn 54 7. Blackfriars, Fleet Street, Fleet Prison, St Paul’s Cathedral 59 8. Golden Square, Gerrard Street, Soho 62 9. Walworth 95 10. Custom House, Lower Thames Street, Houndsditch, Leadenhall Street, St Mary Axe, the Monument, Fish Street Hill, the Borough 99 11. St George’s Circus (previously Fields) 107 12. Whitechapel 107 13. Millbank, from the Surrey side of the Thames 130 14. Islington Turnpike Gate (1819) 134 15. Islington Toll Gate (1829) 134 16. Islington, with City Road and Windsor Terrace 135 17. Whitechapel 180 18. St Mary Axe 199 19. Early Nineteenth-Century London Street 233 Series Editor’s Preface ‘Victorian’ is a term at once indicative of a strongly determined concept and an often notoriously vague notion, emptied of all meaningful content by the many journalistic misconceptions that persist about the inhabitants and cultures of the British Isles and Victoria’s Empire in the nineteenth century. As such, it has become a by-word for the assump- tion of various, often contradictory habits of thought, belief, behaviour and perceptions. Victorian studies and studies in nineteenth-century lit- erature and culture have, from their institutional inception, questioned narrowness of presumption, pushed at the limits of the nominal defi ni- tion, and have sought to question the very grounds on which the unre- fl ective perception of the so-called Victorian has been built; and so they continue to do. Victorian and nineteenth-century studies of literature and culture maintain a breadth and diversity of interest, of focus and inquiry, in an interrogative and intellectually open-minded and challeng- ing manner, which are equal to the exploration and inquisitiveness of its subjects. Many of the questions asked by scholars and researchers of the innumerable productions of nineteenth-century society actively put into suspension the clichés and stereotypes of ‘Victorianism’, whether the approach has been sustained by historical, scientifi c, philosophical, empirical, ideological or theoretical concerns; indeed, it would be incor- rect to assume that each of these approaches to the idea of the Victorian has been, or has remained, in the main exclusive, sealed off from the interests and engagements of other approaches. A vital interdisciplinar- ity has been pursued and embraced, for the most part, even as there has been contest and debate amongst Victorianists, pursued with as much fervour as the affi rmative exploration between different disciplines and differing epistemologies put to work in the service of reading the nineteenth century. Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture aims to take up both the debates and the inventive approaches and departures from Series Editor’s Preface ix convention that studies in the nineteenth century have witnessed for the last half-century at least. Aiming to maintain a ‘Victorian’ (in the most positive sense of that motif) spirit of inquiry, the series’ purpose is to continue and augment the cross-fertilisation of interdisciplinary approaches, and to offer, in addition, a number of timely and untimely revisions of Victorian literature, culture, history and identity. At the same time, the series will ask questions concerning what has been missed or improperly received, misread or not read at all, in order to present a multi-faceted and heterogeneous kaleidoscope of representations. Drawing on the most provocative, thoughtful and original research, the series will seek to prod at the notion of the ‘Victorian’, and in so doing, principally through theoretically and epistemologically sophisticated close readings of the historicity of literature and culture in the nine- teenth century, to offer the reader provocative insights into a world that is at once overly familiar and irreducibly different, other and strange. Working from original sources, primary documents and recent inter- disciplinary theoretical models, Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture seeks not simply to push at the boundaries of research in the nineteenth century, but also to inaugurate the persistent erasure and provisional, strategic redrawing of those borders. Julian Wolfreys Abbreviations Throughout, I have cited the Penguin editions as amongst the most generally available and reliable of scholarly editions. However, I have also consulted certain of the Oxford editions, particularly with reference to the editorial apparatus, and bibliographical details of these are also given below. Where I have cited the Oxford editions, this is made clear in the endnotes. AP Dickens’ Journalism Volume 2: ‘The Amusements of the People’ and Other Papers: Reports, Essays and Reviews 1834–51. Ed. Michael Slater. London: J. M. Dent, 1996. BH Bleak House. Ed. Nicola Bradbury. Preface Terry Eagleton. London: Penguin, 2003. Bleak House. Ed. and Int. Stephen Gill. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. DC David Copperfi eld. Ed. and Int. Jeremy Tambling. London: Penguin, 1996. David Copperfi eld. Ed. Nina Burgess. Int. Andrew Sanders. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. DS Dombey and Son. Ed. and Int. Andrew Sanders. London: Penguin, 2002. GA Dickens’ Journalism Volume 3: ‘Gone Astray’ and Other Papers from Household Words 1851–59. Ed. Michael Slater. London: J. M. Dent, 1998. GE Great Expectations. Ed. Charlotte Mitchell. Int. David Trotter. London: Penguin, 2003. HT Hard Times. Ed. and Int. Paul Schlicke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. LCD v. I House, Madeline, Graham Storey, et al, eds. The Letters of Charles Dickens Volume One 1820–1839. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965. LD Little Dorrit. Ed. and Int. Stephen Wall and Helen Small. London: Penguin, 1998. Little Dorrit. Ed. and Abbreviations xi Int. Harvey Peter Sucksmith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. MC Martin Chuzzlewit. Ed. and Int. P. N. Furbank. London: Penguin, 1986. Martin Chuzzlewit. Ed. and Int. Margaret Cardwell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. MED The Mystery of Edwin Drood.