Imagining Early Modern London

Book excerpt: The 120 years that separate the first publication of John Stow's famous Survey of London in 1598 from John Strype's enormous new edition of the same work in 1720 witnessed London's transformation into a sprawling augustan metropolis, very different from the compact medieval city so lovingly charted in the pages of Stow. Imagining Early Modern London takes Stow's classic account of the Elizabethan city as a starting point for an examination of how generations of very different Londoners - men and women, antiquaries, merchants, skilled craftsmen, labourers and beggars - experienced and understood the dramatically changing city. A series of interdisciplinary essays explore the ways in which Londoners interpreted and memorialized their past: how individuals located themselves mentally, socially and geographically within the city, and how far the capital's growth was believed to have a moral influence upon its inhabitants.