'Among the numerous books on Dickens's London, "Going Astray" is
unique in combining detailed topography and biography with close
textual analysis and theoretically informed critiques of most of
the novelist's major works. In Jeremy Tambling's intriguing and
illuminating synthesis, the "London A-Z" meets Nietzsche, Benjamin
and Derrida.' Rick Allen, author of "The Moving Pageant: A Literary
Sourcebook on London Street-Life, 1700-1914"
Dickens wrote so insistently about London - its streets, its
people, its unknown areas - that certain parts of the city are
forever haunted by him. "Going Astray: Dickens and London" looks at
the novelist's delight in losing the self in the labyrinthine city
and maps that interest, onto the compulsion to 'go astray' in
writing.
Drawing on all Dickens' published writings (including the
journalism but concentrating on the novels), Jeremy Tambling
considers the author's kaleidoscopic characterisations of London:
as prison and as legal centre; as the heart of empire and of
traumatic memory; as the place of the uncanny; as an old curiosity
shop. His study examines the relations between narrative and the
city, and explores how the metropolis encapsulates the problems of
modernity for Dickens - as well as suggesting the limits of
representation.
Combining contemporary literary and cultural theory with
historical maps, photographs and contextual detail, Jeremy
Tambling's book is an indispensable guide to Dickens, nineteenth-
century literature, and the city itself.
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