London: The Biography

New York: Nan A. Talese / Doubleday, 2001. First American Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Near Fine. 6x2x9. First American edition. Spine slightly concave along top edge, a couple tiny spots on top edge. Binding tight and square, pages clean, bright, and unmarked. 2001 Hard Cover. xxvi, 801, [5] pp. 8vo. 'London: The Biography is the pinnacle of Peter Ackroyd's brilliant obsession with the eponymous city. In this unusual and engaging work, Ackroyd brings the reader through time into the city whose institutions and idiosyncrasies have permeated much of his works of fiction and nonfiction. Peter Ackroyd sees London as a living, breathing organism, with its own laws of growth and change. Reveling in the city's riches as well as its raucousness, the author traces thematically its growth from the time of the Druids to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Anecdotal, insightful, and wonderfully entertaining, London is animated by Ackroyd's concern for the close relationship between the present and the past, as well as by what he describes as the peculiar 'echoic' quality of London, whereby its texture and history actively affect the lives and personalities of its citizens.