1700: Scenes from London Life (edit title)

Shelfari edited the description of 1700: Scenes from London Life Tuesday, August 11 2009.

• In 1700, London was a city like no other, poised between medievalism and future empire. London had endured a plague and witnessed the Great Fire of 1666. A king had been publicly executed at Whitehall. Now the city with Christopher Wren's skyline of churches bulged with riches and boasted the most glittering jewels of England: John Locke, George Handel, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and astronomer Edmund Halley. It was a city of flourishing merchants and a rising standard of living, but its inhabitants also waded deep in the mire of nightsoil, disease, and crime. Maureen Waller has written a biography of the teeming, sprawling London previously known only through fiction.

Shelfari edited the contributors of 1700: Scenes from London Life Wednesday, July 22 2009.

• Added a contributor: Maureen Waller: (Primary Author)

Shelfari edited the first sentence of 1700: Scenes from London Life Friday, July 17 2009.

• THIRTY-FOUR YEARS after the Great Fire, the worshippers at St Paul's still gaze up at an open sky.