London has long inspired and celebrated books and writing, and some of the most well-known and beloved names in English Literature have all passed through the city – William Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf and Oscar Wilde, to name a few. With Literary London as your guide, walk in their footsteps, discover their old stomping grounds and shine a new light on both the authors and their city. 

Decorated with illustrations, maps, and interspersed with fact boxes about the lives of major London writers, this book delves deep into literary history to reveal a hidden world of spies, romantic poets and revolutionary outcasts, journeying via the publishing houses, cafes and parks that have played their part in inspiring them over the years.