Work In Progress: Lost and Found
Robinson Crusoe (1719) is the first book I shall be walking around for this project. The English author Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) is considered one of the founders of the English novel. For many, Robinson's character encapsulates the freedom and detachment of the wanderer and has become the literary symbolic icon of the lone traveller. Defoe's later book, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), was a reconstructed account of the London plague outbreak in 1665. Defoe drew inspiration from the streets in which he lived and was able to reinterpret what he saw to build up a fictional and believable account of the city from nearly sixty years before.
The poet, painter and engraver William Blake (1757-1827)
took daily walks through the streets where he lived in London. He used what he saw on his walks to
create many of the symbolic metaphors found in his art.
An example of this can be found in his poem London:
Wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
For my second journey, I shall walk around the book Blake, The Complete writings (1969) that includes the poem London
in its complete form.
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) is best known for his book Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821), where we are presented with an autobiographical account of his Opium fuelled walks around London. He takes us on a journey into the nocturnal streets of the 19th century London, where he walked as a cure for melancholy and a source of creative stimulation. Through the combination of walking, writing and imagination, De Quincey managed to transform the familiar everyday surroundings into something extraordinary and inspirational for the reader. Confessions of an English Opium Eater also proved to be extremely influential to Charles Baudelaire, whom would later help establish the literary figure of the Flâneur.
The American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) spent a number of years in London as a boy and the memory of his experiences helped him to write the short story, The Man of The Crowd (1840). The story begins with the narrator sat in a cafe watching the crowds when his attention is drawn to a curious and suspicious figure. He follows the man on foot through London as day turns to night, up until he attempts to apprehend the man and stop him. The man, however, fails to notice him before disappearing out of sight, leaving the mystery of the stranger unsolved forever. Poe's character encapsulated the vision of a figure who was both a man at home in the crowd and yet a detached and isolated observer of the city. This notion was also to be highly instrumental in the creation of the Flâneur.
The writer Arthur Machen (1863-1947) believed that if the human eye was closer attuned to its surroundings, it could reveal the eternal wonder in the everyday. In his novel The Three Impostors (1895), he takes us on a journey through London, where at first everything appears normal, yet under its ordinary surface, a gothic world of mystery and fear prevails. Like Blake and De Quincey, Machen walked the city to find inspiration for his stories. His aimless walks were driven by his imagination and his desire to seek out the exotic unknown upon his own doorstep. The Three Impostors, the fifth book I shall walk around, presents us with a series of short tales, all revolving around the wonder of walking the city in order to discover its mysteries within its shadows.
More than any other literary figure of recent years, Iain Sinclair is considered the quintessential resemblance
of the modern day Flâneur and literary walker. Along with the writer Peter Ackroyd, he has been largely responsible
for the resurgence and re-interest in psychogeography and the practice of urban walking. In perhaps his most popular book,
London Orbital (2002), Sinclair takes us on a walking journey around the M25 ring road where London's local past is interspersed
with its present to create a contemporary document of the places that lie on the cities outer reaches. London Orbital is the sixth
book I shall walk around.
"The only way to truly discover a city is on foot"
For his book Walk the Lines (2011), Mark Mason set out to walk the entire London underground network over ground,
passing all 269 stations along the way. By weaving together personal experiences with local history,
Mason takes us on a journey into modern-day London. He provokes us to consider how walking can open up the world to
the individual and how, through close observation and physical exercise, we may come to know the cities where we
reside in a more profound way. Walk the Lines, is an example of how contemporary
writers are tackling the subject of urban walking from a fresh perspective, whilst drawing from the literary
walkers of London's past.