Reading London - in fiction

A select list of books set in 19th Century London available at Westminster libraries.

Please note: each link will open in a new window.

 

Fiction [go to the non-fiction list]

Classic fiction [CLA]

DICKENS, Charles

The foremost popular author of the Victorian period. Many of his novels are set in and around London including:

The old curiosity shop

For the character of Little Nell, the beautiful child thrown into a shadowy, terrifying world, Dickens drew upon the tragedy in his own life. His characters are startlingly powerful, especially Quilp, the antithesis of Little Nell.

Oliver Twist

Dickens's classic morality tale of a starving orphan caught between opposing forces of good and evil is a powerful indictment of Victorian England's Poor Laws. Oliver begins life in the workhouse, graduates to the criminal underworld of London and learns to survive.

DOYLE, Arthur Conan

The creator of the most famous private detective of them all, Sherlock Holmes, and his associate Dr. Watson. They were first introduced to his readers in 'A study in scarlet'.

A study in scarlet

Arriving in the wilderness of London, Dr John Watson finds himself lodging at 221b Baker Street with one Sherlock Holmes. A corpse has been discovered and scrawled in blood across the walls is the word RACHE - revenge. Watson is baffled by the case but for Holmes the game is afoot.

The adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Amid the foggy streets of sinister London, Holmes and Watson once more solve the unsolvable. In 'Speckled Band', 'The Engineer's Thumb' and ten other stories, Holmes grapples with the very extremes of treachery, duplicity and murderous end.

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General fiction

ACKROYD, Peter

Historian and novelist; also presenter of TV series on London and the River Thames.

The casebook of Victor Frankenstein

Victor Frankenstein begins his anatomy experiments in a village near Oxford. The coroner's office provides corpses, but they are often damaged & putrifying. Then he makes contact with the Doomesday Men - the resurrectionists. Perfect specimens are hard to come by, until one day he is brought a handsome young man, & his work can truly begin.

The Lambs of London

Touching and tragic, ingenious, funny and vividly alive, this is Ackroyd at the top of his form in a masterly retelling of a 19th century drama which keeps the reader guessing right to the end.

ARNOLD, Gaynor

Girl in a blue dress (Man Booker Prize 2008 longlisted)

Set in the Victorian era, this is the story of the widow of a celebrity author. The funeral of Alfred Gibson has taken place at Westminster Abbey. His wife of 20 years, Dorothea, has not been invited. She looks back on their marriage - to the happy times as well as the bad. A fictionalised account of the life of Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine.

BRADLEY, James

The resurrectionist

London 1826. Gabriel Swift arrives to study with Edwin Poll, the greatest of the city's anatomists. It is his chance to find advancement by making a name for himself. But instead he finds himself drawn to his master's nemesis, Lucan, the most powerful of the city's resurrectionists and ruler of its trade in stolen bodies.

CLARK, Clare

The great stink

Returning to London after the horrors of the Crimean War, William May has landed a job at the heart of Bazalgette's transformation of the London sewers. But when the sewers begin to yield dark and dangerous secrets, May discovers that life above ground is far more dangerous than beneath.

EWING, Barbara

The mesmerist, or, The Misses Preston, of Bloomsbury

('One book for Westminster')

Unable to find stage work, actresses Cordelia Preston & Rillie Spoons need to find a way of making a living. Cordelia remembers the skills of her aunt & sets out to be a phreno-mesmerist, advising couples on their compatability & enlightening women on 'the gentle intricacies of the wedding night'.

HARWOOD, John

The séance

London, the 1880s. A young girl grows up in a household marked by death, her father distant, her mother in perpetual mourning for the child she lost. Desperate to coax her mother back to health, Constance Langton takes her to a seance. Perhaps they will find comfort from beyond the grave, but there are tragic consequences.

PULLMAN, Phillip

The ruby in the smoke [The Zone]

Soon after Sally Lockhart's father drowns at sea, she receives an anonymous letter. The dire warning it contains makes a man die of fear at her feet. Determined to discover the truth about her father's death, Sally is plunged into a mystery in the dark heart of Victorian London, at the centre of which lies a deadly blood-soaked jewel.

WATERS, Sarah

Fingersmith

Set in 1860s London, this is the story of Susan, a pickpocket who is persuaded to pose as a lady's maid and infiltrate the house of a young heiress. This novel explores the nature of identity and what people do with disguise.

Tipping the velvet

This is a wonderfully lush, sensous and bawdy novel set in the music halls of the late 19th century. Nan gets to meet her heroine, Kitty, a male impersonator. The two begin a double act, and their affection for each other deepens.

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Family sagas

COURT, Dilly

The best of sisters

12 year-old Eliza Bragg has known little in life but the cold, comfortless banks of the Thames. Her only comfort is the love and protection of her older brother, Bart. But Bart is forced to flee when he accidentally kills a man. Alone and at the mercy of her cruel uncle, Eliza realises that her very survival is at stake.

The cockney sparrow

Gifted with a beautiful soprano voice, young Clemency Skinner is forced to work as a pickpocket in order to support her crippled brother, Jack. Their feckless mother, Edith, has fallen into the clutches of an unscrupulous pimp, whose evil presence threatens their daily existence.

The constant heart (Quick Choice)

Despite living by the side of the Thames, with its noise, disease and dirt, 18-year-old Rosina May has wanted for little in life. Until her father's feud with a fellow bargeman threatens to destroy everything. To save them all, Rosina agrees to marry Harry, the son of a wealthy merchant.

HAGEN, George

Tom Bedlam

Growing up fatherless in Vauxhall during the 1860s and working in a porcelain factory, young Tom Bedlam doesn't have it easy. Yet he is a positive spirit, cunning in his pursuit of love and a steadfast friend. But everything changes when his perfidious father turns up, followed by the revelation that Tom has an older brother.

STARLING, Belinda

 The journal of Dora Damage

By the time Dora discovers that there is something wrong with her husband Peter, it is too late. His arthritic hands are crippled, putting his book-binding business into huge debt. Summoning her courage Dora resolves to rescue her family, and finds herself illegally binding volumes of pornography commissioned by aristocrats.

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Murder and other crime [CRI]

BRANDRETH, Gyles Daubeney

 Oscar Wilde and the candlelight murders

Oscar Wilde, celebrated poet, wit, playwright and raconteur is the literary sensation of his age. Yet when he chances across the naked corpse of 16-year-old Billy Wood, he cannot ignore the brutal murder. With the help of fellow author Arthur Conan Doyle he sets out to solve the crime.

Oscar Wilde and the ring of death

When Mrs Robinson, palmist to the Prince of Wales, reads Oscar Wilde's palm she cannot know what she has predicted. Nor can Oscar know what he has set in motion when, that same evening, he proposes a game of 'murder' in which each on his Sunday Supper Club guests must write down those whom they would like to kill.

JACKSON, Lee (* as L.M. Jackson)

 The last pleasure garden

A sinister figure stalks the banks of the River Thames, preying on young women. His crime? Merely to remove a lock of their hair. Inspector Decimus Webb suspects a harmless lunatic is at large - but when morbid obsession turns to murder, even Webb's loyal sergeant begins to doubt his judgement.

London dust

A young woman, Natalie Meadows, jumps from Blackfriars Bridge, escaping from the horror she had just witnessed. But she is rescued and feels duty-bound to find out who murdered her best friend, the music hall star Nellie Warwick, and why.

The mesmerist's apprentice *

When the enigmatic Sarah Tanner re-opens her coffee shop soon after a disastrous fire, the gossips of Leather Lane grudgingly admit she has the luck of the devil. Yet when a local butcher is falsely accused of a heinous offence, selling horse-meat, it seems her luck has run out.

A Metropolitan murder

Inspector Decimus Webb's investigation of the murder of a young woman, abandoned in a second-class carriage, leads him through the slums of Victorian London to a home for 'fallen women' and to Clara White. He must then decide whether she is merely a victim of circumstances, or a prime suspect.

A most dangerous woman *

When the mysterious Sarah Tanner opens her Dining and Coffee Rooms upon the corner of Leather Lane and Liquorpond Street, her arrival amongst the poor market-traders is a nine-days' wonder. Few doubt that she has a 'past', but no-one can possibly predict how it will return to haunt her.

The welfare of the dead

In the disreputable dance-halls and 'houses of accommodation' of 1870s London, a boastful killer selects his prey. His crimes seem like random acts of malevolence, but Inspector Decimus Webb is not convinced. He uncovers layer and layer of deceit, but can he unearth the darkest secret before tragedy strikes?

McGEE, James

Ratcatcher

Matthew Hawkwood just wants to do his job - keeping the peace on the teeming, crime-ridden streets of Regency London. But there is more to this tall, dark and dangerous Bow Street Runner than meets the gin-sodden eye.

Resurrectionist

For the body snatchers, death is a lucrative business. But it's the corpse they leave behind, horribly mutilated and nailed to a tree, which sets Bow Street Runner Matthew Hawkwood on their trail.

Rapscallion

Bow Street runner Matthew Hawkwood brings his own form of justice to the salons and slums of Regency London in the follow-up to 'Resurrectionist'.

MARSTON, Edward

Murder on the Brighton Express

October 1854. As an autumnal evening draws to a close, crowds of passengers rush onto the soon to depart London to Brighton Express. A man watches from shadows nearby, grimly satisfied when the train pulls out of the station.

The railway detective

London 1851. The London to Birmingham mail train is robbed and derailed, injuring the driver and others aboard. Planned with military precision this crime challenges the new Police Force to its limits and leads Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck to discover a tangled web of murder, blackmail and destruction.

PEACOCK, Caro

Death of a dancer

A public spat between two dancers at a London theatre has a dramatic conclusion that wasn't in the script: one dead, the other arrested for murder. As far as the jury's concerned, it's an open-and-shut case, but Liberty Lane believes otherwise. Soon she's leading her own investigation.

PERRY, Anne

Author of many stories set in Victorian London, and more recently books set in the Edwardian period.

Death of a stranger

Hester Monk works with the women of the streets in Victorian London. The prostitutes are often seriously injured but when a prominent businessman is found dead in one of the area's brothels, Hester and her husband are forced to investigate.

PEPPER, Andrew

The last days of Newgate

A detective story featuring death, intrigue and adventure in pre-Victorian London. A Bow Street Runner & crook, Pyke falls under suspicion after a series of murders, & finds himself a prisoner in the Newgate prison. It moves from the violent world of 1800s Belfast to the top levels of Machiavellian pre-Victorian politics.

The revenge of Captain Paine

Pyke is back and facing a new and dangerous enemy. With the birth of the Industrial Revolution comes a different kind of threat for our erstwhile Bow Street Runner, and the stakes for Pyke, with his young wife and child and an elevated place in society to protect, have suddenly become much higher.

Kill-devil and water

From the author of 'The Last Days of Newgate' comes a tale of brutal murder and deception, set in the back streets of Victorian London and the cane fields of Jamaica. Pyke, grieving over his wife's death, is in debtors' prison. He is given his freedom, in return for which he must investigate the murder of an immigrant from Jamaica.

RAYBOURN, Deanna

Silent in the grave

London 1886. For Lady Julia Grey, her husband's sudden death at a dinner party is extremely inconvenient, not to mention an unpardonable social gaffe. However, things take a turn for the worse when inscrutable private investigator Nicholas Brisbane reveals that the death was not due to natural causes.

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Science fiction/alternative history [SF]

MANN, George

The affinity bridge

Welcome to the world of Victorian London, a city on the edge of revolution. But this is also a world where lycanthropy is a rampant disease that plagues the whorehouses of Whitechapel, where poltergeist infestations create havoc, where cadavers can rise from the dead and where nobody ever goes near the Natural History Museum.