Abstract

LEONARD SCHWARZ As Vanessa Harding P01l1ts out, there have been a reasonably large number of publications on seventeenth-century London, with many important themes being discussed. This remains the case until the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The years between about 1725 and 1815 have attracted remarkably little attention; for the years between Waterloo and the Great Exhibition the attention of historians has been uneven and not overwhelming. For the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there are books by Rappaport, Boulton, Archer, and Pearl; there are themes and articles that are argued about for a couple of decades, such as Pearl's discussion of social stability in seventeenth- century London (3.2, 3.3, 3.8, 3.9). For the eighteenth century there is little of this. There are few books on any particular aspect of London history, and even fewer after the first quarter of the eighteenth century. One obvious reason for the paucity of publications on eighteenth-century London is that the town is becoming too large and varied to handle. By the nineteenth century historians are tending to consider suburbs and parts of the town. But it is also because over all studies of eighteenth- century London loom the overpowering