Life in London, or the day and night scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq., and his elegant friend Corinthian Tom in their rambles and sprees through the Metropolis by Pierce Egan.
I read this book for the second time this year, the two hundredth anniversary of its publication. It was a bestseller in the nineteenth century and led to many spinoffs, but nobody seems to read it anymore. A scan of an 1869 reprint is at [1]. The Wikipedia article is at [2].
I don’t know if this is a good book—the characters and plotting are thin, and the obsolete slang and topical humor make it difficult to read—but there seems to be a premodern masterpiece of postmodernism lurking in its self-referentiality and its dense, rambling prose. Even the footnotes have footnotes [3].
Thanks. I have read Three Men in a Boat and I enjoyed it. I started reading Tristram Shandy a long time ago but couldn’t get into it; I should give it another try.
Speaking of unread books, this year I compiled a list of fifty nineteenth century novels that nobody seems to read anymore [1]. I’ve read a couple of them myself, and they were reasonably entertaining. Maybe others on the list are as well.
The movie with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (with a cameo by the guy from Black Books whose name escapes me despite having seen him in person and I’m too proud to look up atm)
is a good skimming if not worthy of being called an abridged version.
I read this book for the second time this year, the two hundredth anniversary of its publication. It was a bestseller in the nineteenth century and led to many spinoffs, but nobody seems to read it anymore. A scan of an 1869 reprint is at [1]. The Wikipedia article is at [2].
I don’t know if this is a good book—the characters and plotting are thin, and the obsolete slang and topical humor make it difficult to read—but there seems to be a premodern masterpiece of postmodernism lurking in its self-referentiality and its dense, rambling prose. Even the footnotes have footnotes [3].
[1] https://archive.org/details/tomjerrylifeinlo00egan/page/n9/m...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_in_London_(novel)
[3] https://archive.org/details/tomjerrylifeinlo00egan/page/64/m...