Life in London

'Tom was the gayest of the gay! Pleasure was his idol—novelty his ruling passion—and to gratify this propensity, every avenue was traced that led to it.' Life in London was a smash hit sensation when it appeared serially between 1820 and 1821. Its plot is ostensibly simple: the country gentleman Jerry Hawthorn visits his suave metropolitan cousin Corinthian Tom, who, in the company of the Oxonian Bob Logic and Tom's amour Corinthian Kate, shows Jerry the highs and lows of life in the world's most populus city. The novel ranges promiscuously, taking in cock fighting and the Royal Academy; a ball in high society and a gin shop in the East End; masquerades and street fighting; lords and bawds; gallants and beggars; and Jacco Macacco the fighting monkey. Showing us the London swirl that Jane Austen's novels largely avoided and employing an exuberant style that informed Charles Dickens' early work, Life in London sweeps its readers through the early-nineteenth-century metropolis, from its exclusive clubs to its poorest slums and from a fortune-teller's shabby parlour to the throne room of George IV. This new edition presents the text in its full extravagant glory. It is supported by detailed notes and glossaries to help situate readers amidst the vastness and rush of a city within which, in Egan's words, 'The extremes, in every point of view, are daily to be met with'.