Gothic Description Of London

[rockyracoon]

For my daughter's English homework, she has to find a piece of Gothic writing about London. Googling keeps bring up advice for Goths and we seem to be going round in circles.

Does anyone know where we might find such a piece.

Many thanks

[Mosaic]

This link may put you on the right track:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_fiction#Victorian_Gothic
Searching on 'gothic genre' gave me that one.

[Eve]

Not very highbrow but unless she needs something a little more highbrow, the Mortal Instruments books have one lot set in London, I think around the Victorian era if Victorian Gothic will do.

The heroine is from New York so a few descriptions of parts of London though it is a teenage book.

[Buenchico]

Wikipedia's page on Gothic Fiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_fiction
refers to G W M Reynold's work 'The Mysteries of London', which can be found online here:
http://www.victorianlondon.org/mysteries/mysteries-00.htm

[brainiac]

Difficult! You could try The Mysteries of London (1844) by G. W. M. Reynolds

[sandyRoe]

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.[3]

Dickens describing a foggy London. NOt sure if it would count as Gothic.

[Buenchico]

In her dissertation, 'Lost in London; or, A Study of Early Urban Gothic Literature', Kellie A Donovan assigns part of William Wordsworth's 'Residence in London' (from 'The Prelude') to the category of 'gothic literature'.
Abstract here:
http://udini.proquest.com/view/lost-in-london-or-a-study-of-early-goid:275880105/

Lines 677 to 721 of the poem (describing St Bartholomew's Fair) certainly seem to be relevant:
http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww293.html

[rockyracoon]

Thanks so much, you lot are truly wonderful.

I'll show her all the links and see what she wants to use.

Thanks again :-)