First published in 2002 by Enitharmon Press. Reprinted 2005.
Contents
Foreword / Anna Adams / The Great Wen -- Rise Up Thou Monstrous Ant-hill on the Plain / William Wordsworth -- It is fearful! It is mad! / Felix Mendelssohn -- from Jerusalem / William Blake -- London Inside and Outside / Amy Clampitt -- Londoner / Fleur Adcock -- Unreal City -- The Burial of the Dead, from The Waste Land / T.S. Eliot -- I behold London, from Jerusalem / William Blake -- The Cities / Alan Brownjohn -- The Londoners / W.H. Auden -- The Weather in the Streets -- A Description of a City Shower / Jonathan Swift -- London Snow / Robert Bridges / London Rain / Kathleen RaineLondon Wind / Kathleen Raine -- from Bleak House / Charles Dickens -- No! / Thomas Hood -- A Rainbow over Brewer Street / Anna Adams -- Trades and the Market -- The Cook's Tale / Geoffrey Chaucer, trans. G. Grigson -- The Chimney Sweeper, from Songs of Innocence / William Blake -- The Chimney Sweeper, from Songs of Experience / William Blake -- Verses made for Women who cry Apples, etc. / Jonathan Swift -- The Coming of Yams and Mangoes and Mountain Honey / James Berry -- from The Confessions of an English Opium Eater / Thomas De Quincey / From The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers / Charles Lambfrom The Good Clerk / Charles Lamb -- The Poor and the Rich -- Poverty in London, from London / Samuel Johnson -- Holy Thursday, from Songs of Innocence / William Blake -- Holy Thursday, from Songs of Experience / William Blake -- The Little Crossing-Sweeper, from Bleak House / Charles Dickens -- Thirty Bob a Week / John Davidson -- The Bitter Cry of Outcast London / William Oxley -- A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis / Charles Lamb -- Cashpoint Charlie / Anne Stevenson -- Counting Song / U.A. Fanthorpe -- Fortunes of War / Kit Wright / How Pleasant it is to have Money / Arthur Hugh CloughChurches, Palaces and Towers -- Kings, Priests and Politicians -- Albion's Angel, from Europe / William Blake -- from Peter Bell the Third: Hell / Percy Bysshe Shelley -- from Italy Versus England / Lord Byron -- The Coronation / Thomas Hardy -- A Refusal / Thomas Hardy -- from Jerusalem / William Blake -- The River Thames -- The Fires By the River / Glyn Maxwell -- London Bridge / Mother Goose -- City River Blues / Benjamin Zephaniah -- Ballad of the Two Tapsters / Vernon Watkins -- Crossing Hungerford Bridge / Anna Adams -- Museums, Theatres, Galleries --Christmas in the Elgin Room / Thomas Hardyfrom A Room of One's Own / Virginia Woolf -- Romeo and Juliet at the Old Vic / Frances Horovitz -- At Tate Modern / John Greening -- In the British Museum / Thomas Hardy -- The Countryman in Town -- from The Prelude / William Wordsworth -- This is London!, from Autobiography / John Clare -- The Melancholy Death of Lord Byron, from Autobiography / John Clare -- Epiphany / Ted Hughes -- Island Man / Grace Nichols -- To a Tree in London / Thomas Hardy -- Lucy's Letter / James Berry -- The Reverie of Poor Susan / William Wordsworth -- The Recent Wars -- London Stone / Rudyard Kipling
Summary Note
This anthology is a celebration of the city of London: ‘Noisy, stimulating, deadening, filthy, mysterious, tolerant, racist, crime-ridden, saint-haunted, ancient, up-to-the-minute, oppressive, liberating, crowded, lonely, addictive, and green-and-gardened, London is a microcosm of the World.’ These words, from Anna Adams’ Foreword, give a taste of the breadth of subject-matter and tone to be enjoyed in this magnificent illustrated anthology. Writing from the Middle Ages to the present is divided into themes including ‘The Weather in the Streets’, ‘The Poor and the Rich’, ‘The Countryman in Town’, ‘The Recent Wars’ and – unavoidably – ‘London Transport’.
Writers include: Anna Adams, W.H.Auden, William Blake, Lord Byron, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Clare, T.S.Eliot, D.J.Enright, U.A.Fanthorpe, Ted Hughes, Samuel Johnson, John Keats, Rudyard Kipling, Percy B. Shelley, JVirginia Woolf, William Wordsworth and Benjamin Zephaniah.