In 1737, Samuel Johnson and his student David Garrick decided to walk to London from Lichfield in search of opportunity. It worked out well for both of them, but for many of the large number who made their hopeful journey to the capital from all over the country in the 18th century, life was more likely to end up like a scene from a Hogarth print, ruined by gin and despair.
London had become a ‘great and monstrous thing’ according to Daniel Defoe. However, if you were lucky enough to survive childhood, and gin, and have a bit of money, it was an increasingly pleasant monster, offering strolls through grand squares and pleasure gardens, and shops displaying a dizzying variety of goods from all over the world alongside cheap copies of a new literary form: the novel. To discuss London’s emergence as a brutal city of consumption and cultural innovation, Rosemary is joined again by Markman Ellis, a professor of 18th-century studies at Queen Mary University of London.
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Read more in the LRB:
Clare Bucknell on Samuel Richardson: https://lrb.me/lrep1001
John Mullan on Pamela: https://lrb.me/lrep1002
Rosemary Hill on Hogarth: https://lrb.me/lrep1003
Tom Paulin on Daniel Defoe: https://lrb.me/lrep1004
Claude Rawson on Henry Fieldings: https://lrb.me/lrep1005
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