Home and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Literary London

Explores radical designs for the home in the nineteenth-century metropolis and the texts that shaped them

Uncovers a series of innovative housing designs that emerged in response to London’s rapid growth and expansion throughout the nineteenth century
Brings together the writing of prominent authors such as Charles Dickens and George Gissing with understudied novels and essays to examine the lively literary engagement with new models of urban housing
Focuses on the ways that these new homes provided material and creative space for thinking through the relationship between home and identity
Identifies ways in which we might learn from the creative responses to the nineteenth-century housing crisis

This book brings together a range of new models for modern living that emerged in response to social and economic changes in nineteenth-century London, and the literature that gave expression to their novelty. It examines visual and literary representations to explain how these innovations in housing forged opportunities for refashioning definitions of home and identity. Robertson offers readers a new blueprint for understanding the ways in which novels imaginatively and materially produce the city’s built environment.