Chapter 3 - Imagining the Stranger

Summary

Chapter 3 considers the various forms of writing about the city that imagined or invoked the perspective of the stranger who walked its streets. It examines how tourist accounts of London in pocket guidebooks shared with proposals for urban improvements and surveys of the city an understanding of the visitor to London as both an audience for accounts of London and also a potential critic of the city. While map, print, and booksellers began to produce items that walked strangers around the city and pointed out its key sites, those proposing improvements expressed concerns that foreign travellers might be disappointed by a city that lacked the grand and magnificent architecture of its European neighbours. Together, these works point to a desire to accommodate strangers and to offer them an account of Britain as a polite and commercial nation.