By Matthew Beaumont and Will Self

Throughout its history, London has been two places: the daytime city of business and work the night time palace of dark desires, crime, and vagrancy. This place has attracted writers, lawyers, poets, and politicians who have all attempted to chart and control the nocturnal flows of the capital. In the medieval city, night walking was a punishable crime; by the Victorian era, Charles Dickens was forced to wander the streets by night in order to becalm his disturbed mind. Why has the city shrouded in darkness been such a compelling subject over the centuries? Before the age of the gas lamp, the city at night was a different place, home to the lost, the licentious, and the insomniac. In this brilliant work of literary investigation, Matthew Beaumont shines a light on the dark perambulations of poets, novelists, and thinkers from Shakespeare, to the ecstatic strolls of William Blake, the feverish urges of opium addict De Quincey, as well as the master nightwalker, Charles Dickens.