Imagining Early Modern London
Perceptions and Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype, 1598–1720

An interdisciplinary exploration of Londoners' mental and social world during the long seventeenth century.

J. F. Merritt (Edited by)

9780521037587, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 12 July 2007

320 pages, 6 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.483 kg

'… the papers are of a consistently high quality, being the more valuable for bringing varied approaches to bear on a range of important issues. The volume will make a very useful addition, not only to the bookshelf of any scholar of London's history, but also to that of the historian of religion, culture and society more generally.' Journal of Ecclesiastical History

The 120 years that separate the first publication of John Stow's famous Survey of London in 1598 from John Strype's enormous new edition of the same work in 1720 witnessed London's transformation into a sprawling augustan metropolis, very different from the compact medieval city so lovingly charted in the pages of Stow. Imagining Early Modern London takes Stow's classic account of the Elizabethan city as a starting point for an examination of how generations of very different Londoners - men and women, antiquaries, merchants, skilled craftsmen, labourers and beggars - experienced and understood the dramatically changing city. A series of interdisciplinary essays explore the ways in which Londoners interpreted and memorialized their past: how individuals located themselves mentally, socially and geographically within the city, and how far the capital's growth was believed to have a moral influence upon its inhabitants.

List of illustrations
Notes on the contributors
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction: perceptions and portrayals of London, 1598–1720 J. F. Merritt
Part I. Memorializing the City: 1. John Stow and nostalgic antiquarianism Patrick Collinson
2. The reshaping of Stow's Survey: Munday, Strype and the Protestant city J. F. Merritt
3. The arts and acts of memorialization in early modern London Ian W. Archer
Part II. Space, Society and Urban Experience: 4. City, capital and metropolis: the changing shape of seventeenth-century London Vanessa Harding
5. Gendered spaces: patterns of mobility and perceptions of London's geography, 1660–1750 Robert B. Shoemaker
6. The publicity of poverty in early eighteenth-century London Tim Hitchcock
7. 'To recreate and refresh their dulled spirites in the sweet and wholesome ayre': green space and the growth of the city Laura Williams
Part III. Inversion, Instability and the City: 8. From Troynouvant to Heliogabalus's Rome and back: 'order' and its others in the London of John Stow Peter Lake
9. Perceptions of the crowd in later Stuart London Tim Harris
10. 'Making fire': conflagration and religious controversy in seventeenth-century London Nigel Smith
Index.

Subject Areas: Local history [WQH], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]