Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London

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How going outside at night without an explicit reason went from being a crime to a leisurely pastime of gentlefolk. The joy of Beaumont’s book is the way it illuminates both literature and urban politics through the splendors and panics of their nighttime journeys. Es ist ein kleines, aber sehr feines Buch, bei dem es um viel mehr geht als nur das Unterwegssein in der Nacht. Description of 4 night walks, one each season, interspersed with sections from a nature journal and poems.

However, in actuality, the criminalisation of nightwalking was only applied to the poor and homeless, whilst the prosperous were free to walk the dark streets at will. In Nightwalking, Matthew Beaumont rubs shoulders with the deviants, dissidents and dispossessed who lurk in the shadows of Shakespeare, Johnson, Blake and De Quincey. This results in plenty of cultural history, such as a magazine article from 1780 that gravely advised its readers not to adopt “the sauntering gait of a lazy Spaniard”, but it also means showing how often authors themselves have been creatures of the night. Succumbing to this temptation even undermines some of the things he's good at: I really appreciated the pointer to William Baldwin's Beware the Cat: The First English Novel, which I clearly need to read, but there's not even a passing reference to its anti-Catholic satirical intent, which seems surely necessary contextual information. In accordance with The Post Office, the last recommended date for Christmas posting is 18th December (2nd Class) and 20th December (First class).I’m not a great nature fan or walker but the sights and sounds (and sometimes smells) are wonderfully evocative.

I didn't agree with all his assessments - I wouldn't say shelley is making the case that the skylark is an aesthetic construct, for example,I just think he's saying it has transcended the material realm. A historical guide to the capital, Beaumont details everything including the 'villainous' common nightwalkers and prostitutes of the middle ages and Charles Dickens’s time as an insomniac.Matthew Beaumont recounts an alternative history of London by focusing on those of its denizens who surface on the streets when the sun s down.