Lisa C Robertson's Page

Our thanks to everyone who showed up to our last session, ‘Dickens’s Night Walks’, which at 41 people attracted the largest crowd we’ve ever drawn — despite the cold and damp! And our especial thanks to Dr. Matthew Beaumont for his tremendous captaincy of this event.We’re very pleased to announce that Dr. Laura Wright (Cambridge) will introduce our next session on ‘Anita Brookner’s London by Foot (and a Bit of…See More

We hope that you are enjoying the festive season!We are already looking forward to the New Year, and are delighted that Dr Matthew Beaumont (UCL) will introduce our first session. This will take place on Tuesday, 13th January from 6.00-7.30pm, in Senate House Room G34.Dickens’s Night WalksThe event will involve a talk and discussion about Dickens’s nocturnal activities in London, which will take place during a gentle stroll from Bloomsbury to Trafalgar Square via St Giles.…See More

Many thanks to those who came to last week’s excellent session on Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners and to Kate Houlden for introducing the text.Our next session will be introduced by Dr Benjamin Poore, who will speak on “Phoney Phonetics: Henry Higgins, Dialect, and the London Cityscape in Pygmalion.” We will meet on the 18th November from 6-7.30pm in Senate House, Room 104. Please do note that this room is different than that which we’ve used in previous years.The street scene in Bernard…See More

A rumour broke through the thin smoke Enwreathing abbey, tower, and palace, The parks, the squares, the thoroughfares, The million-peopled lanes and alleys, An ever-muttering prisoned storm, The heart of London beating warm.– John Davidson – “London” (1895)The Literary London Reading Group meets (just about) monthly at Senate House Library in London.We explore those processes that contribute to creation and destruction of an imagined city and its fictional territories. Whether a text is…See More

This event will be the first to bring together scholars interested in Victorian writer and social activist Margaret Harkness, who published under the pseudonym John Law. The symposium will highlight the importance of Harkness’ work to our understanding of late-Victorian socialist and labour politics and the living and working conditions of the urban poor.Including a keynote by Dr Terry Elkiss, ‘A Law onto Herself: Glimpses of Hidden Harkness’, and contributions from Professor David Glover, Dr…See More

For our first session, we’re very pleased to announce that Dr. Kate Houlden (LJMU) will introduce Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956) in honour of Black History Month. This session will take place on Tuesday, 28 October from 6.00pm – 7.30pm in Senate House, Room G37. Please do note that this room is different than that which we’ve used in previous years.‘Galahad feel like a king living in London’: Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956)Sam Selvon arrived in London from Port of Spain,…See More

It might be the final session of the academic year but this certainly doesn’t mean we’re drawing to a respectful standstill. There’s been some changes to the original schedule but this (rather serendipitously) means that Simon Avery and Katherine M. Graham from the Queer London Research Forum will be speaking to us about Jonathan Kemp’s London Triptych (2010). This event will take place on Tuesday 24 Jun 2014, 6.00-7.30pm in Senate House, Room 234.Jonathan Kemp’s 2010 novel charts the lives of…See More

Although she is mostly remembered today for her poetry, Alice Meynell was also a prolific editor and essayist. In London Impressions Meynell presents the reader with a series of written portraits of the city at the turn of the century, which are set alongside etchings and pictures of the capital by the artist William Hyde. These condensed and inspired responses to urban experience and sensation examine the ‘effect of London’, as she describes it. With a painter’s eye and the language of a poet,…See More

After last month’s captivating discussion of women’s lodging houses (thanks to our ‘Gimme Shelter’ panel) in which the significance of dustiness featured particularly prominently, the reading group moves on to tackle the (perhaps comparably dusty?) world of the London graphic novel.We are delighted that Alex Fitch (Resonance FM) has agreed to introduce a session entitled ”It’s Dark in London: Alan Moore, Psychogeography…See More

For our next session, we’ve planned something exciting, experimental and slightly unorthodox: a panel session in which we’ll welcome Emily Gee (English Heritage), Terri Mullholland (Oxford) and Emma Short (Newcastle) to introduce ‘Gimme Shelter: Women’s Housing in London, 1880 – 1945′. The session will take place on Tuesday, 19 November from 6.00 – 7.30 in Senate House Room 234.Advances in gender equality in the latter half of the nineteenth century, particularly in view of education and…See More

A rumour broke through the thin smoke Enwreathing abbey, tower, and palace, The parks, the squares, the thoroughfares, The million-peopled lanes and alleys, An ever-muttering prisoned storm, The heart of London beating warm.– John Davidson – “London” (1895)The Literary London Reading Group meets (just about) monthly at Senate House Library in London.We explore those processes that contribute to creation and destruction of an imagined city and its fictional territories. Whether a text is…See More

A rumour broke through the thin smoke Enwreathing abbey, tower, and palace, The parks, the squares, the thoroughfares, The million-peopled lanes and alleys, An ever-muttering prisoned storm, The heart of London beating warm.– John Davidson – “London” (1895)The Literary London Reading Group meets (just about) monthly at Senate House Library in London.We explore those processes that contribute to creation and destruction of an imagined city and its fictional territories. Whether a text is…See More

A rumour broke through the thin smoke Enwreathing abbey, tower, and palace, The parks, the squares, the thoroughfares, The million-peopled lanes and alleys, An ever-muttering prisoned storm, The heart of London beating warm.– John Davidson – “London” (1895)The Literary London Reading Group meets (just about) monthly at Senate House Library in London.We explore those processes that contribute to creation and destruction of an imagined city and its fictional territories. Whether a text is…See More

A rumour broke through the thin smoke Enwreathing abbey, tower, and palace, The parks, the squares, the thoroughfares, The million-peopled lanes and alleys, An ever-muttering prisoned storm, The heart of London beating warm.– John Davidson – “London” (1895)The Literary London Reading Group meets (just about) monthly at Senate House Library in London.We explore those processes that contribute to creation and destruction of an imagined city and its fictional territories. Whether a text is…See More

Tales from the Underground 2013 marks the 150th anniversary of the London Underground. For the first 40 years of its life, today’s Circle Line was worked by steam locomotives, hauling carriages divided into separate compartments, and gas-lit. After a first couple of decades when novelists either ignored it (e.g. Dickens) or treated it purely functionally (e.g. Trollope), the Underground increasingly featured in both short stories and novels. So too did popular magazines begin to feature…See More

Tales from the Underground 2013 marks the 150th anniversary of the London Underground. For the first 40 years of its life, today’s Circle Line was worked by steam locomotives, hauling carriages divided into separate compartments, and gas-lit. After a first couple of decades when novelists either ignored it (e.g. Dickens) or treated it purely functionally (e.g. Trollope), the Underground increasingly featured in both short stories and novels. So too did popular magazines begin to feature…See More