London in fiction

Many works of fiction are set in London, the capital of the United Kingdom.

Early fiction

• Daniel Defoe - A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), Moll Flanders (1722)

19th Century fiction

• Many of Charles Dickens's most famous novels are at least partially set in London, including: Oliver Twist (1838), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840),David Copperfield (1850) Bleak House (1853), Little Dorrit (1857), A Tale Of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1861), Our Mutual Friend (1865) The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870).
• Jules Verne - Around the World in Eighty Days (French: Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours) (1872)
• Henry James - The Princess Casamassima (1886), A London Life (1888), What Maisie Knew (1897), In the Cage (1898)
• Robert Louis Stevenson - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
• Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
• H. G. Wells - The War of the Worlds (1898)
• H. G. Wells - The Invisible Man (1897)
• Somerset Maugham - Liza of Lambeth (1897)
• Bram Stoker's - Dracula (1897) comes to London in order to seduce Mina Harker.
• Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Holmes live at 221B Baker Street - a fictional address since Baker Street was much shorter in Victorian times. The Docklands area plays a large part in The Sign of Four.
• George Gissing's novels are almost exclusively set in London, including The Nether World (1889), New Grub Street (1891) and The Odd Women (1893).

20th Century fiction

Prewar fiction

• P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster novels (1919 onwards). Wooster lives mainly in London, and is a member of the Drones Club.
• Virginia Woolf - Mrs Dalloway (1925)
• T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land makes frequent reference to the Unreal City.
• Chesterton's allegorical works The Man Who Was Thursday and The Napoleon of Notting Hill both feature surreal depictions of London.
• Pamela L. Travers' Mary Poppins (1934). Takes place on Cherry Tree Lane and at the Bank of England.
• Cameron McCabe - The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor (1937)
• Patrick Hamilton - Hangover Square (1941)

Postwar fiction

• Elizabeth Bowen - The Heat of the Day (1949)
• George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
• Agatha Christie - Crooked House (1949)
• Graham Greene - The End of the Affair (1951)
• Samuel Selvon - Lonely Londoners (1955)
• Colin McCabe's City of Spades (1957), Absolute Beginners (1959) and Mr Love and Justice (1960)
• Iris Murdoch - A Severed Head (1961)
• Doris Lessing - The Four-Gated City (1969)
• Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow (1973}
• Maureen Duffy - Capital (1975)
• Peter Ackroyd - The Great Fire of London (1982), Hawksmoor (1985), The House of Doctor Dee (1993), Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994), The Clerkenwell Tales (2003), The Lambs of London (2004)
• Iain Banks - Walking on Glass (1985), Dead Air (2002)
• Martin Amis - Money (1984), London Fields (1989)
• Tom Clancy - Patriot Games (1987)
• Hanif Kureishi - The Buddha of Suburbia (1987)
• Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses (1989)
• Josephine Hart - Damage (1991)
• Bernice Rubens - A Solitary Grief (1991)
• Barbara Vine - King Solomon's Carpet (1991)
• Nick Hornby - Fever Pitch (1992), High Fidelity (1996), About a Boy (1998)
• Will Self - Grey Area (1996)
• Julian Barnes - Metroland (1997)
• Helen Fielding - Bridget Jones' Diary (1997)
• Anthony Frewin - London Blues (1997), set mainly in Soho at the time of the Profumo affair
• Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (1997) is set partly in real London, and partly in an alternative "London Below".
• J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (1997 onwards) features fictional London locations: the hidden Diagon Alley and a Platform 9 and 3/4 at King's Cross.
• Ronald Wright - A Scientific Romance (1997) features detailed descriptions of a ruined London in the year 2500.
• William Boyd - Armadillo (1998)
• William Sutcliffe - The Love Hexagon (2000)

21st-Century fiction

• Zadie Smith - White Teeth (2001)
• Miles Tredinnick - Topless, (2001)
• Bernadine Evaristo - The Emperor's Babe (2002)
• William Gibson - Pattern Recognition (2003)
• Zoë Heller - Notes on a Scandal (2003)
• Adam Thirlwell - Politics (2003)
• Neal Stephenson - The Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver (2003), The Confusion (2004), The System of the World (2004))
• Monica Ali - Brick Lane (2004)
• Ben Elton - Past Mortem (2004)
• A. N. Wilson - My Name Is Legion (2004)
• Anthony Horowitz - Stormbreaker, Eagle Strike, Scorpia, Ark Angel
• Ian McEwan - Saturday (2005)
• Kia Abdullah - Life, Love and Assimilation (17 May, 2006)
• Philip Reeve - Mortal Engines (2001), A Darkling Plain (2006)

Nursery rhymes

Several nursery rhymes mention places in London.

• London Bridge is obviously mentioned in London Bridge is falling down.
• Oranges and Lemons mentions several London Churches.
• Pop Goes the Weasel one version refers to the Eagle pub on the City Road.