Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London

Books & Poetry

Wednesday July 08, 2015 Comments

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Matthew Beaumont’s Nightwalking is an accomplished and complex historical and literary biography of London at night.

Beaumont, a senior lecturer in the Department of English at University College London, suggests that in the dead of night in the city, the darkness itself remains, in some inherent sense, hostile.

Nightwalking, by Matthew Beaumont, Allen & Unwin, $39.99.

Nightwalking was actually a crime in England for more than a millennium, until 1827. Those who walked alone in the streets after dark were considered the city’s “internal exiles” – daylight’s dispossessed, the deviant, the dissident and the different.

From time immemorial, individual sauntering at night has been construed as moral, social or spiritual dereliction.

Yet, in this eloquent account, Beaumont argues that nightwalkers represent some of the most revealing guides to the neglected and forgotten aspects of the dark side of the metropolis.

As he excavates occluded aspects of London, he explores the nocturnal ideas of literary figures such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, William Blake, William Wordsworth, and that great noctambulant of the Victorian age, Charles Dickens. In doing so, he provides not only a nocturnal but also an alternative cultural history of London.

The tone of the book is quasi-academic, but this does not detract from the pleasure because Beaumont’s arguments are uncontrived, intelligent and captivating.

The Night, from Dickens’ Bleak House.

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<h1>Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London</h1>

<address><a href="https://inreview.com.au/contributors/stephen-davenport/" class="author">Stephen Davenport</a></address>
											
							<p>Matthew Beaumont’s <em>Nightwalking </em>is an accomplished and complex historical and literary biography of London at night.</p>
<p>Beaumont, a senior lecturer in the Department of English at University College London, suggests that in the dead of night in the city, the darkness itself remains, in some inherent sense, hostile.</p>
<div id="attachment_43125" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="http://indaily.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Nightwalking-vertical.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-43125" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-43125" src="https://indaily.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Nightwalking-vertical.jpg" alt="Nightwalking-vertical" width="200" height="300" /></a></p>
<p id="caption-attachment-43125" class="wp-caption-text">Nightwalking, by Matthew Beaumont, Allen & Unwin, $39.99.</p>
</div>
<p>Nightwalking was actually a crime in England for more than a millennium, until 1827. Those who walked alone in the streets after dark were considered the city’s “internal exiles” – daylight’s dispossessed, the deviant, the dissident and the different.</p>
<p>From time immemorial, individual sauntering at night has been construed as moral, social or spiritual dereliction.</p>
<p>Yet, in this eloquent account, Beaumont argues that nightwalkers represent some of the most revealing guides to the neglected and forgotten aspects of the dark side of the metropolis.</p>
<p>As he excavates occluded aspects of London, he explores the nocturnal ideas of literary figures such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, William Blake, William Wordsworth, and that great noctambulant of the Victorian age, Charles Dickens. In doing so, he provides not only a nocturnal but also an alternative cultural history of London.</p>
<p>The tone of the book is quasi-academic, but this does not detract from the pleasure because Beaumont’s arguments are uncontrived, intelligent and captivating.</p>
<div id="attachment_43127" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://indaily.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/The-Night-Dickens.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-43127" loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-43127" src="https://indaily.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/The-Night-Dickens.jpg" alt="The Night, from Dickens' Bleak House." width="500" height="300" /></a></p>
<p id="caption-attachment-43127" class="wp-caption-text">The Night, from Dickens’ Bleak House.</p>
</div>
<p> </p>
							<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://inreview.com.au" target=_blank  rel="canonical">InReview</a> under a Creative Commons licence. Read the <a href="https://inreview.com.au/inreview/books-and-poetry/2015/07/08/nightwalking-a-nocturnal-history-of-london/" target=_blank  rel="canonical">original article</a>.</p>
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<p><a href="https://inreview.com.au" target="_blank" rel="noopener">InReview</a> is an open access, non-profit arts and culture journalism project. Readers can <a href="https://artists.australianculturalfund.org.au/s/project/a2E9q0000008PVN/inreview-sa-20222023" target="_blank" rel="noopener">support our work with a donation</a>. Subscribe to InReview’s free weekly newsletter <a href="https://inreview.com.au/subscribe/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.</p>
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