ENG020N253H: Magic Murder & Mystery in London Literature

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Class schedule

Topic Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday

Murder Introduction to Victorian Jack the Ripper: Excursion:
the module: murder! Key Alan Moore, Murder in
learning to read texts include From Hell London
the city from the Stevenson, The (1999); screening
19th century to Strange Case of of The Hughes
the present Dr Jekyll and Brothers, From
Mr Hyde Hell (2001)
(1886); Wilde,
The Picture of
Dorian Gray
(1891)
Magic Magic in Excursion: Magic Realism: Ben Aaranovitch,
childrens Magic in London Angela Carter, Rivers of
literature: P.L The Magic London (2011)
Travers, Mary Toyshop (1967)
Poppins (1964);
Extracts from
Rowling, Harry
Potter and the
Philosophers
Stone (1997)
Mystery Consulting Excursion: Mysteries of Treasure hunt
Detectives: Mystery in London: China
Screening of London Mieville, Un Lun
Euros Lyn The Dun (2007); Neil
Blind Banker, Gaiman,
Sherlock Series Neverwhere
1, episode 2 BBC (1997)
1 (2010)
Assessment
Assessment for this module will consist of:

a blog covering at least one text and one field-trip (2000 words - 40%), and
an essay on any aspect of the module which covers two of the core texts (2000 words
- 60%)

Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete this module will

Foster a curiosity about London as a setting for literary texts

Have secure knowledge of a range of literary texts from the late Victorian period to the
present day
Have footfall knowledge of key locations for texts (Bloomsbury, Soho, Baker Street etc.)
Express themselves across a range of written forms through the academic essay and the
personal blog

Bibliography
Core Texts: While it is recommended that you read the core texts in full, a module reader of
key extracts from these texts will be provided for all students. Many of the older texts are
out of copyright and available for free online!

Aaranovitch, Ben, Rivers of London (Hachette, 2011)

Carter, Angela, The Magic Toyshop (Virago, 1967)

Gaiman, Neil, Neverwhere (Hachette, 2010)

Lyn, Euros The Blind Banker, Sherlock Series 1, episode 2 BBC 1 (2010)

Mieville, China, Un Lun Dun (Pan Macmillan, 2011)

Moore, Alan, From Hell (Top Shelf Productions, 2006)

Pratchett, Terry, Dodger (Random House, 2012)

Rowling, J.K., Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone (Bloomsbury Childrens Books, 2004)

Stevenson, Robert Louis The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales (Oxford World
Classics, 2006)

Travers, P.L., Mary Poppins (HarperCollins, 2010)

Wilde, Oscar, The Major Works including The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oxford University Press,
2000)
Secondary Material: Your tutor will direct you to key secondary and critical texts for each
topic on a class-by-class basis. This list is intended to offer broad overviews of the key topics
and themes for the module.

Histories of London

Ackroyd, Peter, London: The Biography (Chatto & Windus, 2000)

Ball, John Clement Imagining London (University of Toronto Press, 2004)

Hebbert, Michael, London: More by Fortune than Design (John Wiley & Sons, 1998)

Groes, Sebastian, The Making of London, (Palgrave, 2011)

Inwood, Steve, A History of London (Macmillan, 1998)

Jerrold, Blanchard and Gustave Dor, London, A Pilgrimage (Anthem Press, 1968)

Porter, Roy, London: A social History (Penguin, 1996)

Wheatley, Henry Benjamin and Peter Cunningham, London Past and Present: Its History,
Associations, and Traditions, (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
Williams, Raymond, The Country and the City (Chatto & Windus, 1973)

Victorian London

Dickens, Charles, A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings (London: Penguin, 2003)

Freeman, Nicholas, Conceiving the City London, Literature, and Art 1870-1914 (Oxford University
Press, 2007)

Horn, Pamela, The Victorian Town Child (Sutton Pub Limited, 1999)

Mayhew, Henry, London Labour and the London Poor, (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Ridenhour, Jamieson, In Darkest London: The Gothic Cityscape in Victorian Literature (Rowman &
Littlefield, 2012)
Thomas, Donald, The Victorian Underworld (John Murray, 2003)
Winter, James, London's Teeming Streets, 1830-1914, (Routledge, 2013)

Modern London

Head, Dominic, The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950-2000 (Cambridge UP,
2002).

Kerr, Joe and Andrew Gibson (Eds), London: from Punk to Blair, (Reaktion Books, 2004)

White, Jerry, London in the Twentieth Century: A City and its People (Viking, 2001)

Detectives and Criminals

Doyle, Arthur Conan, Adventures and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Penguin, 2001)

Duckworth, Jeannie, Fagin's Children: Criminal Children in Victorian England, (Continuum, 2002)
Lauterbach, Edward S., "Murder Will Out": The Detective in Fiction, and: Sherlock Holmes in
London: A Photographic Record of Conan Doyle's Stories, and: On the Scent with Sherlock
Holmes (review) MFS Modern Fiction Studies Volume 36, Number 2, Summer 1990 pp. 285-
28

Porter, Lynnette R. (ed), Sherlock Holmes for the 21st Century: Essays on New Adaptations,
(McFarland, 2012)

Shpayer-Makov, Haja, The Ascent of the Detective: Police Sleuths in Victorian and Edwardian
England (Oxford University Press, 2011)

Walking and mapping the city

Allinson, Kenneth, London's Contemporary Architecture: A Map-based Guide (Routledge, 2006)

de Certeau, Michel, Walking in the City in The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. (1925) by Steven
Rendall (U of California P, 1984)

Dickens, Charles, Night Walks (Penguin, 2010)

Deborah Parsons, Streetwalking the Metropolis (Oxford UP, 2000) pp. 188-208

Gay, John, Trivia: Or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London: a Descriptive Poem (Ballintine &
Law, 1807)

Jacks, Ben. Reimagining Walking: Four Practices Journal of Architectural Education, Vol. 57, No. 3
(Feb., 2004), pp. 5-9 Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1425774

Whitfield, Peter, London: a life in maps (British Library, 2006)

Fantasy and Magic

Bowers, Maggie Anne, Magic(al) Realism (Routledge, 2013)

Butler, Andrew M. The Tain and the Tain: China Mivilles Gift of Uncanny London, CR: The New
Centennial Review Volume 13, Number 2, Fall 2013 pp. 133-153

Cantrell , Sarah K., "I solemnly swear I am up to no good": Foucault's Heterotopias and Deleuze's Any-
Spaces-Whatever in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series, Children's Literature Volume 39,
2011 pp. 195-212

Doyle, Arthur Conan, Through the Magic Door (The Floating Press, 2012)

During, Simon, Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of Secular Magic (Harvard University
Press, 2009)

Ho, Elizabeth, Postimperial Landscapes: "Psychogeography" and Englishness in Alan Moore's

Graphic Novel From Hell: A Melodrama in Sixteen Parts, Cultural Critique 63, Spring 2006 ,
pp. 99-121
Rankin, Sandra K., China Mieville and the Misbegot: Monsters, Magic, and Marxism (Proquest,
2009)

Tranter, Kirsten, China Miville, An Interview with China Miville, Contemporary

Literature Volume 53, Number 3, Fall 2012 pp. 417-436

Shopping

Lysack, Krista, Come Buy, Come Buy: Shopping and the Culture of Consumption in Victorian
Women's Writing (Ohio University Press, 2009)

Fiction and the City

Guignery, Vanessa and Franois Gallix, (Re-)mapping London: Visions of the Metropolis in the
Contemporary Novel in English (Publibook, 2008)
Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space, trans. by Donald Nicholson-Smith, (Blackwell, 1991)

Lefebvre, Henri, Writings on Cities trans. by Elenore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, (Blackwell, 1996)

Lehan, Richard, The City in Literature: An Intellectual and Cultural History (U of California, 1998)

McHale, Brian, Postmodernist Fiction (Routledge, 1999)

Manley, Lawrence, The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of London (Cambridge University
Press, 2011)

Todd, Richard, Fantasies of London: Past and Present, in Consuming Fictions (Bloomsbury, 1996),
pp. 164-198.
Wolf Levy, Diane, City Signs: Toward a Definition of Urban Literature, Modern Fiction Studies, 24
(1978), 70-81
Wolfreys, Julian, Writing London: The Trace of the Urban Text from Blake to Dickens (St. Martins
Press, 1998)

Useful websites

http://www.victorianlondon.org

http://londonist.com/2010/03/hand-drawn_maps_of_london_a_mystery.php

http://victoriansupersleuth.com/

https://archive.org/

http://www.victorianweb.org/

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/06/05/284-londons-lost-rivers/

http://mappinglondon.co.uk/