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

Description

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 memorialised 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.

Dr Julia Merritt is Research Fellow in the Department of History, University of Sheffield. Her previous publications include The Political World of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, 1621-1641 (Cambridge University Press 1996).

'... 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