Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City (National Geographic Directions) [Paperback]

Anna Quindlen (Author)

Book Description

Series: National Geographic Directions | Publication Date: January 17, 2006

Anna Quindlen first visited London from a chair in her suburban Philadelphia home—in one of her beloved childhood mystery novels. She has been back to London countless times since, through the pages of books and in person, and now, in Imagined London, she takes her own readers on a tour of this greatest of literary cities.

While New York, Paris, and Dublin are also vividly portrayed in fiction, it is London, Quindlen argues, that has always been the star, both because of the primacy of English literature and the specificity of city descriptions. She bases her view of the city on her own detailed literary map, tracking the footsteps of her favorite characters: the places where Evelyn Waugh's bright young things danced until dawn, or where Lydia Bennett eloped with the dastardly Wickham.

In Imagined London, Quindlen walks through the city, moving within blocks from the great books of the 19th century to the detective novels of the 20th to the new modernist tradition of the 21st. With wit and charm, Imagined London gives this splendid city its full due in the landscape of the literary imagination.

Praise for Imagined London:

"Shows just how much a reading experience can enrich a physical journey." —New York Times Book Review

"An elegant new work of nonfiction... People will be inspired by this book." —Ann Curry, Today

"An affectionate, richly allusive tribute to the city." —Kirkus Reviews

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This latest entry in National Geographic’s series of famous writers on famous cities is like the British dish bubble and squeak: a hash of thrown together bits and pieces that might be tasty but isn’t very filling. An avid reader, Quindlen (Living Out Loud, etc.) developed an acute case of literature-induced Anglophilia at an early age. As a precocious youngster, she was enchanted by the terrace houses, green squares and horse-drawn carriages of the written worlds of Daniel Defoe, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens and Henry James’s London. Later swept away by Virginia Woolf and the Mitford sisters, Quindlen doesn’t actually visit London until her mid-40s while on a trip to promote one of her own books. Quindlen’s narrative essays, while thematic, lack enough specific locations to make them consistently interesting. While she comments on the extraordinary fact that one can still find one’s way around London based on 18th-century literary plot points, she doesn’t take explicit literary tours herself, leaving readers to wonder to what extent the expectations of a lifelong love affair with the London of her mental library are met. Instead, Quindlen shifts the focus away from herself and toward her experience of traveling with her 20-something writer son, comparing and contrasting their generational impressions of the city. Map not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Best-selling novelist and Newsweek columnist Quindlen has always been an "indefatigable" reader, and British novels set in London, "indisputably the capital of literature," have been a particular passion. Quindlen acquired a vivid impression of the city from absorbing Dickens, Eliot, Galsworthy, Doyle, Woolf, and Lessing, writers for whom London was as much a living character as their indelible protagonists. But she admits she was reluctant to travel there and obliterate the imagined with the actual. Finally, a book tour sends her to this fabled place, and she does revel in London's evocative complexity as she undertakes pilgrimages to literary landmarks. Deftly contrasting "the London frozen in the amber of great fiction" with today's city, Quindlen discerns the key lesson of English literature: the "unvarying nature both of social problems and personal dramas." The continuity that links, for instance, characters and predicaments in Monica Ali's Brick Lane (2003) to those in Dickens' works. A consistently enlightening and enjoyable writer, Quindlen presents a smart, bookish, wry, and stimulating portrait of the most literary of cities. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: National Geographic (January 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792242076
• ISBN-13: 978-0792242079
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 0.5 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #793,814 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anna Quindlen is the author of three bestselling novels, Object Lessons, One True Thing and Black and Blue, and three non-fiction books, Living Out Loud, Thinking Out Loud and A Short Guide to a Happy Life. Her New York Times column 'Public and Private' won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. She is currently a columnist for Newsweek and lives with her husband and children in New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Nearly Long Enough!!, October 17, 2004

By 

John D. Cofield - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City (Directions) (Hardcover)

Imagined London is a wonderful love story. Anna Quindlen, who had visited London in her dreams for many years, made her first physical visit in 1995. She tells the story of that visit, and many subsequent ones, in this all too slim volume about the great city's many literary connections.

This book reminds me of Helene Hanff's The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street in that it focuses on literary London, but like that book, Imagined London appeals on many levels. A visitor to London can use it as a walking tour guide, for example. Even those who will rarely or never visit the city will find the elegant writing and deft descriptions are to be treasured.


My only complaint about Imagined London is that it is far too short! Had it been two or even three times as long, I would still savor every word!

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A love letter to London, September 25, 2004

By 

Theodore A. Rushton (PHOENIX, Arizona United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City (Directions) (Hardcover)

Nothing could be finer than reading a fine book by a fine writer writing about a fine city of fine writers . . . . get my drift? . . . . and this book is a literary delight by an exceptionally fine former New York Times columnist.

Of course, it's not quite like being there. As Quindlen states, "Perhaps in a small way he wanted to drive home what is always a valuable lesson, when we insist on learning the world through books: that accuracy and truth are sometimes quite different things." True enough, I suppose. But, on a personal basis and having once visited London myself, her book brings back an "accuracy and truth" that was much better than my memories of London.

Anyone reading this is obviously a literate person; on that basis, Quindlen offers a fine tour of the literary highlights of one of the world's great cities. Why is London great? She says, "A third of London . . . is grass or gardens." She appreciates the people, places, writers and words of London and how they came to hold such a powerful place in literature.

In a world where Quarter Pounders with Cheese and Gap jeans are as ubiquitous as Burberrys and Harris Tweeds, London is distinctive. New York, like Phoenix and many American cities, was planned with a mathematical rigour that is as user-friendly as a straight jacket. If New York streets are a Mondrian painting, and Phoenix a Rorschach cookie-cutter test, then London is the genius of a Picasso. London just grew, and nothing from the collapse of Londinium to the Great Fire of 1666 to the Blitz of World War II has persuaded Londoners to destroy its human appeal.

A city this good deserves an author with the sensitivity and insight and perception of Quindlen; every reader of this book will be delighted she turned her loquacious talents to lovely London and its wonderful charms, its quirks and oddities and normalities and routines which create a city worth remembering. Quindlen is truly an author worth reading.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Save your money, January 31, 2006

By 

C. Davis (Washington D. C.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City (Directions) (Hardcover)

There is so much more to the imaginary London than the author conveys. This book feels like it was dictated to complete an assignment. Buy the Ackroyd book, London: A Biography instead...and then use your own imagination. I agree with previous reviewers who called it superficial with the real book still waiting for an author to write it.