I’m simultaneously shocked and tickled pink to be teaching a course relating to my research specialty at the graduate level. After more than a decade teaching historical methods and years before that teaching nineteenth century European social history (don’t ask), teaching “Topics in British History” will be a positive pleasure.
The course theme is London, 1550-1950. Do you want to read along with my M.A. students? Here’s our reading list:
- Derek Keene, “Metropolitan comparisons: London as a city-state” Historical Research (November 2004) 77 (198), 459-480. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2281.2004.00218.x
- Vanessa Harding, “City, capital and metropolis: the changing shape of seventeenth-century London” in Imagining Early Modern London: Perceptions and Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype, 1598-1720. Ed. J F. Merritt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 117-143.
- Paul Slack, “Perceptions of the Metropolis in Seventeenth-Century England” in Civil Histories: Essays Presented to Sir Keith Thomas. Ed. Peter Burke, Brian Harrison, and Paul Slack (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 161–80.
- Amanda Vickery, “An Englishman’s Home Is His Castle? Thresholds, Boundaries and Privacies in the Eighteenth-Century London House” Past & Present 199 (May, 2008), 147-173. DOI:10.1093/pastj/gtn006
- David Day, “Kinship and Community in Victorian London: the ‘Beckwith Frogs'” History Workshop Journal 71 (Spring 2011), 194-218.
- Benjamin Heller, “Leisure and the Use of Domestic Space in London” The Historical Journal 53:3 (September 2010) 623-645 DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X10000221
- Robert Bucholz and Joseph Ward, London: A Social and Cultural History, 1550-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) 9780521896528
- Tim Hitchcock, Down and Out in Eighteenth Century London (London: Continuum, 2007) 9781852855529
- Caroline Shenton, The Day Parliament Burned Down (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 9780199677504
- Rosalind Crone, Violent Victorians: Popular Entertainment in Nineteenth-Century London (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012) 9780719086854
- Jonathan Schneer, London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001) 9780300089035
- Maureen Waller, London 1945: Life in the Debris of War (New York: St. Martin’s, 2006) 9780312338046
I’m also steering them towards many outstanding websites, including the following:
- The Map of Early Modern London
- London Lives, 1690-1800
- London’s Screen Archives
- London at British History Online
- London History at The City of London official website
- Charles Booth Online Archive – Life and Labour in London, 1886-1903
Am I missing anything great? Suggestions are eagerly welcomed in the comments. Classes begin January 6th with the first three articles on the list and we’ll wrap up the meetings in early April.
jliedl.ca 
You may want to toss in Judith Flanders. She’s written fascinating and entertaining books on Victorian era London.
Thanks! Definitely adding her to our supplementary reading options as we come to the Victorian era.
sounds like so much fun. I expect to pinch some of this for Early Modern in the fall!
There’s so much good stuff coming out on early modern London. I have a supplementary list for that topic of another sixteen books and forty-three articles. An embarrassment of riches!
Paul Griffiths, Lost Londons, is a bit tough to inflict on undergrads, but I think grad students could really get their teeth into it, and there was roundtable on it in Histoire sociale / Social History.
I thought long and hard about including it because it’s fantastic, you’re right! However, only one student ihas had any grounding in premodern history beyond the Western Civ level so we’re ramping it up slowly with Bucholz & Ward after the first three articles. I’ve got “Lost Londons” on the list of recommended books as they hammer out their own research topics.
Probably a good idea if most don’t have an early modern background. Oh well. Good luck with the course!