Metropolitan Travel Writing at Mid-Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2025
Catherine Waters argues that the growth of London, and the proliferation of cheap periodicals, particularly after the repeal of the newspaper stamp tax in 1855, generated a new form of ‘metropolitan travel writing’ representing ‘the lived rhythms of urban experience that is a distinctive development in the print culture of the 1850s’. Dickens’s Household Words, launched in 1850, published graphic sketches of city life that provided readers with a vivid experience of imaginary flânerie. This chapter is concerned with George Augustus Sala, a protégé of Dickens, whose 1858 serialised account of a day in London for The Welcome Guest – ‘Twice Round the Clock’ – deploys its serial form to map the temporal geography of the metropolis with an appealing blend of reporting and storytelling.
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