London Uncanny - A Gothic Guide to the Capital in Weird History and Fiction

From Kensington to the East End, under candlelight, gas lamp and then neon signs, London is both a bustling physical metropolis and a stirring psychic encounter. The most depraved depictions of London in fiction, film, poetry, television and theatre have irrevocably merged with the reality of its dark history, creating a phantasmagoria defined by murder, vice and the unnatural. In this panoptic look at the capital at its most eerie and macabre, Clive Bloom takes a tour of Gothic London''s uncanny literature, arcane events and its infamous and imagined geographies. From David Bowie to T S Eliot, Thomas de Quincey to Aleister Crowley, the prophetess Joanna Southcott to the ''ghosts'' of Abba and the worlds of Neil Gaiman and Clive Barker, these are the figures that populate a city lost in fog and blind alleys, where the dead can be raised, the living sacrificed and the clandestine thrive. Suturing together fact and fantasy, London Uncanny presents the urban landscape of the capital as a space of wonder and madness, haunted by its past and haunting the present. Stalking through disease and degeneracy, death and murder, spiritualism, lunacy and the occult, Bloom crafts a singular, integrated concept of a London where dreams and nightmares meet.>

About the author

Clive Bloom

Product details

• Authors: Clive Bloom, Bloom Clive
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 20.02.2025
• EAN: 9781350424036
• ISBN: 978-1-350-42403-6
• No. of pages: 240
• Dimensions: 158 mm x 236 mm x 24 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; London, Greater London, City of London, Gothic, FICTION / Occult & Supernatural, HISTORY / Modern / 19th Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Gothic & Romance, FICTION / Gothic, 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899, British & Irish history, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, Occult Studies