Invisible Architecture in Nineteenth-Century Literature

Ben Moore is Assistant Professor in English Literature at the University of Amsterdam. His research areas include nineteenth-century literature, cities, money, modernity, childhood and the human. He is the author of Human Tissue in the Realist Novel, 1850–1895 (Palgrave 2023) and Co-Editor of the Gaskell Journal. His work has appeared in journals including Victorian Literature and Culture, Modernism/modernity, Modern Language Review and the Journal of Victorian Culture, as well as in various handbooks and edited collections.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Mobility, Concealment, TransparencyPart I Writers and Cities1. The Hidden City: James Kay, Friedrich Engels and Mary Barton’s Cellars2. The Unstable City: Rivers, Railways and Houses in Dombey and Son and Our Mutual Friend 3. The Transparent City: Mansions, Montage and Commodity Architecture in The Kill and The Ladies’ ParadisePart II Spatial Forms4. Gothic Architecture and Urban Modernity5. The Arabesque City6. The Whiteness of the CityConclusion: The Invisible Architecture of New YorkBibliographyIndex

Challenging a straightforward visible/invisible dichotomy, Invisible Architecture animates literature and architecture as a dynamic relation adept at registering the energy, transitions and turbulence of urban modernity so central to nineteenth century life. Readers interested in spatial relations, cities, and the category of literature will all gain much from this book.