Dickens and Demolition

'Dickens and Demolition shows how Dickens shaped London. Not only was the novelist actively involved in urban sanitation schemes, but his fictional depiction of London's most deprived areas helped to bring down buildings, and construct new streets. As Hofer-Robinson vividly demonstrates here, novels have afterlives, and literary tropes sometimes have decidedly material effects.' Nicholas Daly, University College Dublin The first study to trace and measure the material impact of Dickens's fiction in London's built environment Dickens and Demolition examines how tropes, characters or extracts from Dickens's fiction were repurposed as a portable terminology in arguments for large-scale demolition and redevelopment projects in London during his lifetime. In analysing allusions to Dickens in a variety of archival sources, including dramatisations, press reports, political debates and the visual arts, this book asks what cultural work is performed by literary afterlives, and whether we can trace their material effects in the spaces we inhabit. Joanna Hofer-Robinson is Lecturer in nineteenth-century literature at University College Cork. Cover image: The Construction of the Metropolitan District Railway © The Museum of London Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN 978-1-4744-2098-3 Barcode