Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London

Walkowitz, Judith

ISBN 10: 0300151942 / ISBN 13: 9780300151947

Published by Yale University Press, 2012

About this Item

Seller Inventory # mon0004058747

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300151942
• ISBN 13: 9780300151947
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

London’s Soho district underwent a spectacular transformation between the late Victorian era and the end of the Second World War: its old buildings and dark streets infamous for sex, crime, political disloyalty, and ethnic diversity became a center of culinary and cultural tourism servicing patrons of nearby shops and theaters. Indulgences for the privileged and the upwardly mobile edged a dangerous, transgressive space imagined to be "outside" the nation.

Treating Soho as exceptional, but also representative of London's urban transformation, Judith Walkowitz shows how the area's foreignness and porousness were key to the explosion of culture and development of modernity in the first half of the twentieth century. She draws on a vast and unusual range of sources to stitch together a rich patchwork quilt of vivid stories and unforgettable characters, revealing how Soho became a showcase for a new cosmopolitan identity.

About the Author

Judith Walkowitz is professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and the author ofCity of Dreadful Delight. She lives in New York.