Tartarus Press

publishers

The London Adventure

Or, The Art of Wandering

by

Arthur Machen

 

The London Adventure is often considered to be Arthur Machen’s third volume of autobiography, but its alternative title, The Art of Wandering, differentiates it from Far Off Things and Things Near and Far. The term ‘wandering’ refers not only to Machen’s many and various journeys around the unconsidered byways of London, but also to the curiously meandering construction of the book. Machen plays a fine game with the reader, discussing what his book might be about, how he should begin it and where it might end. The result is a curiously up-to-date psychogeographical manifesto, written, as always, in the author’s beautiful prose.

 

Added to the original text of The London Adventure are a number of essays, several uncollected, which inform and illustrate Machen’s contention that, ‘All the wonders lie within a stone’s-throw of King’s Cross Station.’

 

Contents:

'Introduction'

'The London Adventure'.

From the London Evening News: 'The Night Sky of London', 'Peter Pan', 'The Enchanted City', 'A Night on the Thames', 'Wonderful London', 'A Study in Back Streets', 'More about Back Streets', 'Wonderful London: Some of Its Unwritten Laws', 'London in Brave Attire', 'When I was Young in London', 'London Thirty Years Ago', The Young Man in the Blue Serge Suit', 'The Joy of London', 'Re-Discovery of London', 'Sunday Night in London', A Night at the Café Royal', Night in London', 'How Spring Came to Kew', 'I Recommend a House', Ghosts of the Strand', 'Hornsey House of Nightmares', 'Racketty Ghost Breaks Out Again', 'Bertie’s Banging Ghost'.

 

As discussed by Ian Macmillan and Stewart Lee on BBC Radio Three's The Verb. The show can be listened to again via the link. The London Adventure is also recommended by Michael Dirda in the Washington Post.