"Unknown London" is an anthology of literature and graphic illustrations that effectively defined a formative moment in the history of the metropolis. Over a period from 1815 to 1845, a relatively small number of authors, playwrights and illustrators, working within a bohemian literary culture, attempted innovatively to grasp the complex totality of the metropolis. They drew contradictorily upon previous genres, but used radical new devices to define their object of inquiry, simultaneously laying the foundation for the writings of Charles Dickens, Henry Mayhew and their successors. This body of work has never been given due attention. In the recent resurgence of interest in the literary metropolis, attention has remained on figures such as Blake, De Quincey, Wordsworth and Dickens, as a result of which the historical significance of the literary milieu represented in this collection has not been recognized. Works by Pierce Egan, George Smeeton, James Grant and W.T. Moncrieff in particular paved the way for early literary modernism. They inhabited a literary world increasingly concerned with opening the eyes of a new reading public to all levels of metropolitan life.
Many of these authors experimented with the relationship between word and image, so establishing forms of pictorial realization that were such an important feature of Victorian publishing. These factors contributed to widening the social range of the novel, theatre and journalistic inquiry, and gave rise to the extraordinary output of "problem" novels in the 1840s, the ascent of Dickens and the tradition of urban travel inspired by Mayhew. This collection of rare texts, most of which have been unavailable for at least a century, should be of interest to academic communities exploring 19th-century British culture, particularly around the metropolis. It should appeal, therefore, to urban, cultural, art, theatre and literary historians, as well as students of Victorian studies and of Charles Dickens.