Art of Walking in London

Alison O'Byrne is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of York. She has published widely on representations of the city in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She is co-editor (with Jim Watt) of Discovering Britain and Ireland in the Romantic Period: Grand Tours (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

• Introduction: negotiating a city shower; 1. Mobility and spectatorship in the early eighteenth-century city: the art of walking the streets of London; 2. Promenading the mall in St. James's park; 3. Imagining the stranger: the tourist in the streets of eighteenth-century London; 4. London spied; 5. Metropolitan pleasures and grievances: reimagining the art of walking the streets of London; Conclusion: 'Much has chang'd since Trivia trod with Gay'; Bibliography; Index.

'O'Byrne reconstructs pedestrianism as a spatial practice with specific codes and unique ways of seeing. Elegantly written, well-researched, and highly engaging, her study engages with a range of fascinating materials in multiple genres to open up new perspectives on the changing social dynamics of city walking in the eighteenth century.' Thomas Keymer, Chancellor Henry N. R. Jackman University Professor of English, University of Toronto