A01=Matthew Beaumont
Author_Matthew Beaumont
Blake
Category=DSB
Charles
Chaucer
city
crime
curfew
de
de Quincey
Dickens
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
gaslight
literature
living
metropolitan
noctambulant
novelists
Orlando
poets
Quincey
Shakespeare
Thomas
travel
urbanism
William
writers
Product details
- ISBN 9781804298480
- Weight: 390g
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 22 Jul 2025
- Publisher: Verso Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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In this brilliant work of literary investigation, Matthew Beaumont shines a light on the shadowy perambulations of poets, novelists and thinkers: the fetid, treacherous streets known to Chaucer and Shakespeare; William Blake and his ecstatic peregrinations; the feverish ramblings of opium addict Thomas De Quincey; and, among the lamp-lit literary throng, the supreme nightwalker Charles Dickens. We discover how the nocturnal city has inspired some and served as a balm or narcotic to others. In each case, the city is revealed as a place divided between work and pleasure, the affluent and the indigent, where the entitled and the desperate rub shoulders.
Matthew Beaumont, a Professor of English Literature at University College London, is the author of several books for Verso, including The Walker: On Finding and Losing Yourself in the Modern City (2020) and How We Walk: Frantz Fanon and the Politics of the Body (forthcoming, 2024). He is also the author of Lev Shestov: Philosopher of the Sleepless Night (2021). For Verso, he has co-authored The Task of the Critic: Terry Eagleton in Dialogue (2009) and co-edited Restless Cities (2010).
