Redefining, Rediscovering, and Rewriting Early Modern London

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

JEMCS 3.2 (Fall/Winter2003) Review Essay: Redefining, Rediscovering, and Rewriting Early Modern London Rachel D. Ramsey Dana Arnold, ed., The Metropolis and Its Image: Constructing Identities for London, c. 1750-1950. London: Blackwell, 1999. 184 pp. $30.95. Dana Arnold, Re-presenting theMetropolis: Architecture, Urban Experience and Social Life in London 1800-1840. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2000. 168 pp. $84.95. Paul Griffiths and Mark S.R. Jenner, eds., Londinopolis: Essays in the Cultural and Social History of Early Modern London. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. 256 pp. $74.95. J.F. Merritt, ed., Imagining Early Modern London: Perceptions 8s Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype 1598-1720. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 300 pp. $60.00. Lena Cowen Orlin, ed., Material London, ca. 1600. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. 384 pp. $26.50. When A.L. Beier and Roger Finlay published London 1500-1700: The Making of the Metropolis in 1986, the editors bemoaned the absence of new studies on London. Their collection set out to correct this oversight and, in the process, produced several essays that have become mile stones in the field, including Paul Slack's investigation of metropolitan responses to the plague, Michael Power's breakdown of Restoration London's social topography, and Roger Finlay's and Beatrice Shearer's documentation of the Ramsey 137 city's population growth. In the wake of their collection and seemingly in response to the editors' call, Roy Porter, Stephen Inwood, Francis Sheppard, and, most recently, Peter Ackroyd have all published substantial monographs on the metropolis. The largely economic and quantitative approach characterizing many of the contributions to Beier's and Finlay's collection not only laid the groundwork for these larger narrative histories but many others, including Elizabeth McKellar's revisionist architectural his tory of seventeenth-century London, Cynthia Wall's inno vative literary reading of London before and after the Great Fire of 1666, and Miles Ogborn's theoretical analysis of London's changing geography and modernizing impulses in the eighteenth century. These new studies and the increasing number of conferences and seminars dedicated to exploring all aspects of the capital, composed of partici pants from a range of disciplines, testify to the flourishing current state of London studies in 2003. The five books under review here?four of which are essay collections and two of which are products of London conferences?demonstrate the growing interdisciplinary interest in London and indicate the direction the field has taken since the publication of Beier's and Finlay's ground breaking collection. These new studies explicitly and implic itly acknowledge their debt to this work in their introduc tions and footnotes, but the editors and authors also care fully highlight the ways in which their own studies mark a significant departure by eschewing generalization, embrac ing complexity, and emphasizing pluralities. Most of the essays stake out a very circumscribed area for study and display, at times, an almost microscopic attention to detail. What we lose with the reduction in scope, though, we gain in the range of new topics explored, new methodologies under taken, and new resources explored. The range of disciplines and fields represented guarantees diversity and demonstrate the ways inwhich the ideas expressed in Beier's and Finlay's collection have been combined with more overtly cultural and theoretical approaches, particularly relating to subjec tivity and spatiality. Perhaps most welcome are the multi plicity of London voices culled from the extensive archival research underpinning so many of the readings. Excerpts 138 The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies from court records, diaries, Parliamentary Reports, and Viewer's Certificates focus on overlooked and underrepre sented segments of London's society, including women, the city's working poor, and its vagrant population. Along with retrieving new information from archives, these authors shed light into the darkened corners of London's back lanes and alleys to illuminate the built environment that most often housed these voices. Peter Blaney, Lena Cowen Orlin, and John Schofield provide exceptionally well-researched and articulated visions of London's early modern buildings and boundaries; all three of these essays appear in Material London, ca. 1600, a collection which embraces the interdisciplinary approach...