London in fiction

Many notable 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)
• Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels (1726)

19th century fiction

William Blake's poem London which explores the meaning of the city. This image is a digital repercussion of his hand-painted 1826 print from Copy AA of Songs of Innocence and Experience.The item is currently in the Collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

• 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)
• Robert Louis Stevenson - New Arabian Nights (1882), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
• Henry James - The Princess Casamassima (1886), A London Life (1888), What Maisie Knew (1897), In the Cage (1898)
• 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)
• Arthur Morrison - A Child of the Jago (1896)
• 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

• Chesterton's allegorical works The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) and The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) both feature surreal depictions of London.
• Joseph Conrad - The Secret Agent (1907)
• J M Barrie - Peter and Wendy (1904 - 1911)
• 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 (1922) makes frequent reference to the Unreal City.
• Evelyn Waugh - Vile Bodies (1930)
• Aldous Huxley - Brave New World (1932)
• 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)
• C. S. Lewis - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)
• John Wyndham - The Day of the Triffids (1951)
• Graham Greene - The End of the Affair (1951) & The Destructors (1954)
• Dodie Smith - The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956)
• Colin MacInnes - Absolute Beginners (1959) and Mr Love and Justice (1960)
• Iris Murdoch - A Severed Head (1961)
• Muriel Spark - The Girls of Slender Means (1963)
• P. L. Travers - Mary Poppins (1964). Takes place on 17 Cherry Tree Lane and at the Bank of England.
• 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)
• Alan Moore - V for Vendetta (1982 – 1989)
• Iain Banks - Walking on Glass (1985)
• Martin Amis - Money (1984), London Fields (1989)
• Tom Clancy - Patriot Games (1987)
• Hanif Kureishi - The Buddha of Suburbia (1987)
• Vertigo (DC Comics) - Hellblazer (1988 - 2013)
• 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)
• J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (1997 - 2007) 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) casts London as the story's main setting.
• William Boyd - Armadillo (1998)
• Alan Moore - From Hell (1999)

21st-Century fiction

• Hanif Kureishi - Gabriel's Gift (2001)
• 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)
• Iain Banks - Dead Air (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)
• Charles Finch - A Beautiful Blue Death (2007), The September Society (2008), The Fleet Street Murders (2009), A Stranger in Mayfair (2010)
• Mary Novik - Conceit (2007)
• Charlie Fletcher - The Stoneheart (2008)
• Anthony Horowitz - Stormbreaker, Eagle Strike, Scorpia, Ark Angel (2008)
• Ruth Rendell - Portobello (2008)
• Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry (2009)
• DC Comics - Wonder Woman is based in London following The New 52 relaunch of her ongoing series (2011–present)
• Ben Aaronovitch - Rivers of London (2011), Moon Over Soho (2011), Whispers Under Ground (2012), Broken Homes (2013)
• Robert Galbraith - The Cuckoo's Calling (2013), The Silkworm (2014) Career of Evil (2015)

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

• The London Fictions website looks at commanding London novels from Defoe to the present day