Softcover

ISBN 10: 087905445X ISBN 13: 9780879054458

Publisher: Gibbs Smith, 1992

Book by Pepper, Choral

From Library Journal:

Reading this book is like sitting down with a big box of bonbons--delicious at first, but too much of a good thing. It is organized like a guidebook with eight walking tours, maps, and photos that wend the reader through the literary neighborhoods of London's West End. The author has an astonishing grasp of the quarrels, trysts, and careers of her Victorian characters, and the book reads like a tabloid in its descriptions of such contemporaries of Wilde as Lily Langtry, the Prince of Wales, George Bernard Shaw, James MacNeill Whistler, and John Singer Sargent. Many of the places mentioned no longer stand, but the guidebook is not about architecture--it is about the flavor of the times from the lives of the people, also long gone. Anton Powell's Londonwalks (Holt, 1991) is not as narrowly focused and is more useful. A discretionary purchase.
- Susan Fifer Canby, National Geographic Soc. Lib., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.