Imagined Londons explores the diverse ways that Britain's "global city" has been imagined and represented in literature, history, the arts, and popular culture, from the mid–nineteenth century to the present day. American and British contributors examine a variety of topics, ranging from poetry to architecture, from dance music to gay pornography, from "tube" maps to the role of Bangladeshi communities in shaping contemporary London politics. Broadly interdisciplinary and deeply attentive to London's historical diversity, the book is unified by its attention to a single question: How have the many imaginations and representations of London shaped—and been shaped by—history and culture? The answers provided within this volume offer the chance to view London in surprising new ways.

Anna Quindlen first visited London from a chair in her suburban Philadelphia home—in one of her beloved childhood mystery novels. She has been back to London countless times since, through the pages of books and in person, and now, in Imagined London, she takes her own readers on a tour of this greatest of literary cities. While New York, Paris, and Dublin are also vividly portrayed in fiction, it is London, Quindlen argues, that has always been the star, both because of the primacy of English literature and the specificity of city descriptions. She bases her view of the city on her own detailed literary map, tracking the footsteps of her favorite characters: the places where Evelyn Waugh's bright young things danced until dawn, or where Lydia Bennett eloped with the dastardly Wickham. In Imagined London, Quindlen walks through the city, moving within blocks from the great books of the 19th century to the detective novels of the 20th to the new modernist tradition of the 21st. With wit and charm, Imagined London gives this splendid city its full due in the landscape of the literary imagination. Praise for Imagined London: "Shows just how much a reading experience can enrich a physical journey." —New York Times Book Review "An elegant new work of nonfiction... People will be inspired by this book." —Ann Curry, Today "An affectionate, richly allusive tribute to the city." —Kirkus Reviews

Black authors of the 18th century were powerful figures: out walking near Charing Cross with one of his artist friends, Ignatius Sancho was accosted by a young fop who cried out to his friend, Smoke Othello. Sancho placed himself across the path and exclaimed in booming tones, Aye, Sir, such Othellos you meet with but once in a century. Such Iagos as you, we meet with in every dirty passage. Proceed, Sir

This study provides the first substantial history and analysis of the To-Day and To-Morrow series of 110 books, published by Kegan Paul Trench and Trübner (and E. P. Dutton in the USA) from 1923 to 1931, in which writers chose a topic, described its present, and predicted its future. Contributors included J. B. S. Haldane, Bertrand Russell, Vernon Lee, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, Sylvia Pankhurst, Hugh McDiarmid, James Jeans, J. D. Bernal, Winifred Holtby, André Maurois, and many others. The study combines a comprehensive account of its interest, history, and range with a discussion of its key concerns, tropes, and influence. The argument focuses on science and technology, not only as the subject of many of the volumes, but also as method—especially through the paradigm of the human sciences—applied to other disciplines; and as a source of metaphors for representing other domains. It also includes chapters on war, technology, cultural studies, and literature and the arts. This book aims to reinstate the series as a vital contribution to the writing of modernity, and to reappraise modernism's relation to the future, establishing a body of progressive writing which moves beyond the discourses of post-Darwinian degeneration and post-war disenchantment, projecting human futures rather than mythic or classical pasts. It also shows how, as a co-ordinated body of futurological writing, the series is also revealing about the nature and practices of modern futurology itself.

We live near the edge—whether in a settlement at the core of the Rockies, a gated community tucked into the wilds of the Santa Monica Mountains, a silicon culture emerging in the suburbs, or, in the future, homesteading on a terraformed Mars. In Imagined Frontiers, urban historian and popular culture scholar Carl Abbott looks at the work of American artists who have used novels, film, television, maps, and occasionally even performance art to explore these frontiers—the metropolitan frontier of suburban development, the classic continental frontier of American settlement, and the yet unrealized frontiers beyond Earth. Focusing on writers and artists working during the past half-century, an era of global economic and social reach, Abbott describes the dialogue between historians and social scientists seeking to understand these frontier places and the artists reimagining them in written and visual fictions. This book offers perspectives on such well-known authors as T. C. Boyle and John Updike and on such familiar movies and television shows as Falling Down and The Sopranos. By putting The Rockford Files and the cult favorite Firefly in conversation with popular fiction writers Robert Heinlein and Stephen King and literary novelists Peter Matthiessen and Leslie Marmon Silko, Abbott interweaves the disparate subjects of western history, urban planning, and science fiction in a single volume. Abbott combines all-new essays with others previously published but substantially revised to integrate western and urban history, literary analysis, and American studies scholarship in a uniquely compelling analysis of the frontier in popular culture.

What are the imagined communities that compel men to kill or to die for an idea of a nation? This notion of nationhood had its origins in the founding of the Americas, but was then adopted and transformed by populist movements in nineteenth-century Europe. It became the rallying cry for anti-Imperialism as well as the abiding explanation for colonialism. In this scintillating, groundbreaking work of intellectual history Anderson explores how ideas are formed and reformulated at every level, from high politics to popular culture, and the way that they can make people do extraordinary things. In the twenty-first century, these debates on the nature of the nation state are even more urgent. As new nations rise, vying for influence, and old empires decline, we must understand who we are as a community in the face of history, and change.

Since medieval times, English literature has often demonized Muslims. The term ‘Islamophobia’ is recent, but the phenomenon is old. This survey of literature focusing on the modern period up to 1914 identifies negative ideas about Islam in novels and plays. Some works are iconic, some more obscure. However, the book highlights writers who challenged stereotypes and tended to see Muslims as equally capable of virtue and vice as Christians and others. The book deals with the role of the imagination in depicting others and how this serves authors’ agendas. The conclusion brings the book’s thesis into dialogue with the debate in the USA today between supporters of multiculturalism and its critics. Anyone interested in how stereotypes are formed, perpetuated and can be challenged will profit from this book. It is aimed at a non-specialist readership.