Much of Peter Ackroyd's work has been concerned with the life and past of London but here is his account of the city. For him it is an organism with its own laws of growth and change, so this is a biography rather than a history. This part covers the street life and people of London.

Much of Peter Ackroyd's work has been concerned with the life and past of London but here, as a culmination, is his account of the city. For him it is an organism with its own laws of growth and change, so this is a biography rather than a history. This part covers London's foundations.

A black comedy of manners and morals, based on the career and crimes of a real-life 18th-century gangland criminal, 'Jonathan Wild the Great' is one of the finest satires in the English language.

Drawing upon extracts from contemporary letters, diaries and memoirs of fascinating inhabitants and visitors, this anthology tells the story of London from its earliest years up to the present day.

Much of Peter Ackroyd's work has been concerned with the life and past of London but here is his account of the city. For him it is an organism with its own laws of growth and change, so this is a biography rather than a history. This part covers fire and pestilence in London.

VOL. 1: ASPIRING SPIRIT. From Stratford to London. (Birth, 1564 - c. 1590) Peter Ackroyd's insightful new biography positions Shakespeare in the close context of his world. In this way, Ackroyd not only richly conjures up the texture of Shakespeare's life, but also imparts an amazing amount of vivid, interesting material about place, period and background. Walk with Ackroyd through sixteenth ...

Much of Peter Ackroyd's work has been concerned with the life and past of London but here, as a culmination, is his account of the city. For him it is an organism with its own laws of growth and change, so this is a biography rather than a history. This part covers trade and enterprise.

The Thames has been a highway, a frontier and an attack route; it has been a playground and a sewer, a source of water and a source of power. This title explores the river from source to sea - from flora and fauna, hauntings and suicides to paintings and photographs it has inspired.

VOL. 2: THE UPSTART CROW. Ambitious Actor and Poet. (c. 1590 - Midsummer Night's Dream) Peter Ackroyd's insightful new biography positions Shakespeare in the close context of his world. In this way, Ackroyd not only richly conjures up the texture of Shakespeare's life, but also imparts an amazing amount of vivid, interesting material about place, period and background. Walk with Ackroyd through ..

Plato, the orator, summons the citizens of London on ritual occasions to impart the ancient history of their city. He dwells particulary on the unhappy era of Mouldwarp (AD 1500-2300), which existed before the dimming of the stars and the burning of the machines. But then he is put on trial.

Edgar Allan Poe began his literary career composing verses modelled on Byron. Poe has been claimed as the forerunner of modern fantasy. This biography of Poe opens with his end, his final days - no one knows what happened between the time when friends saw him off on the steam-boat to Baltimore and his discovery six days later dying in a tavern.

This is the only available edition of a brilliant novel by the leading Restoration dramatist and author of The Way of the World. Masked balls, mistaken identity, and fanciful deceits run riot in this hilarious tale of love and intrigue by the master of the Restoration comedy. Returning to Florence on the occasion of his eighteenth birthday, Aurelian - together with his sworn companion Hippolito -

Sophia Chrysanthis is only 16 when the German archaeologist Herr Obermann comes wooing: he wants a Greek bride who knows her Homer. Sophia passes his test, and soon she is tieing canvas sacking to her legs, so that she can kneel on the hard ground in the trench, removing the earth methodically, and identifying salient points.

An ingenious satire of the battle of the sexes and the follies of a self-centred young lady, 'The Rape of the Lock', together with its mock-interpretation 'A Key to the Lock', is, in fact, a subtle commentary on the contemporary social world and high-society preoccupations, and a cleverly veiled proposal for reform.

In 1762 James Boswell, then twenty-two years old, left Edinburgh for London. The famous Journal he kept during the next nine months is an intimate account of his encounters with the high-life and the low- life in London, and a frank personal portrait of the young Boswell.

This large format picture book about London is divided into four parts: Roman and medieval London; the Great Fire of 1666 compared with the Blitz of 1944; Motley Theatrical London, including street fairs; the Industrial Revolution, London as the centre of the Empire, expansion of the suburbs.

Much of Peter Ackroyd's work has been concerned with the life and past of London but here is his account of the city. For him it is an organism with its own laws of growth and change, so this is a biography rather than a history. This part covers the districts and suburbs of London.