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City-Lit
London
London is the world's most happening, most exciting and most diverse city. And no one reflects this brilliant complexity better than London's writers, whether home-grown, adopted or simply visiting.
"City-Lit London" offers us the best writing on this amazing city with over sixty dazzling writers. Join them as...Will Self gets inside the head of a London cabby; Jan Morris flies into Heathrow; Monica Ali smells the curry on Brick Lane; Alan Bennett gives us a ride in the Queen's carriage; Xiaolu Guo enjoys a greasy spoon cafe in Hackney; Beryl Bainbridge attends Dr Johnson's funeral in Westminster Abbey; Sam Sevlon recalls the boat train arriving from Trinidad; Virginia Woolf goes shopping in Oxford Street; Barbara Cartland takes us to a West End ball; and, Dostoyevsky strolls down the Haymarket.
Introduced by Peter Watts
Other titles in the series: Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin, Istanbul, Venice, St Petersburg, New York
"City-Lit London" offers us the best writing on this amazing city with over sixty dazzling writers. Join them as...Will Self gets inside the head of a London cabby; Jan Morris flies into Heathrow; Monica Ali smells the curry on Brick Lane; Alan Bennett gives us a ride in the Queen's carriage; Xiaolu Guo enjoys a greasy spoon cafe in Hackney; Beryl Bainbridge attends Dr Johnson's funeral in Westminster Abbey; Sam Sevlon recalls the boat train arriving from Trinidad; Virginia Woolf goes shopping in Oxford Street; Barbara Cartland takes us to a West End ball; and, Dostoyevsky strolls down the Haymarket.
Introduced by Peter Watts
Other titles in the series: Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin, Istanbul, Venice, St Petersburg, New York
250 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2009
About the author
Heather Reyes
24 books17 followersHello. I'm Heather Reyes - writer, editor, publisher,' Londoner'.
I'm co-founder of Oxygen Books and have edited all nine of the volumes in our city-pick series of travel anthologies.
Before setting up Oxygen Books in 2008, I had published a range of things - children's stories, poetry, short stories, articles, and a novel (Zade, Saqi Books 2004). Now that Oxygen Books is ticking over, I'm getting back to some of my own writing again. My novel Miranda Road and two non-fiction books, An Everywhere: a little book about reading and Bookworms, Dog-Ears & Squashy Big Armchairs: A Book Lover's Alphabet, published in 2014, was Reader's Digest Christmas Book of the Month which was very exciting!
This summer my 'fiftysomething' novel Perfectly Fine is out (I guess it must be a beach read as the cover has some rather lovely coloured pebbles on sand - actually made on Aldeburgh beach by my granddaughter Abigail Reyes.)
Talking it over with Genghis Khan, my rather quirky first short story collection, is out this autumn. I think readers will either love or hate it - I hope it's the former! Do let me know either way.
I hope this website gives you the information you need - I guess it depends on why you've looked me up! - but if not, please feel free to contact me at heather@oxygenbooks.co.uk
ABOUT ME ...
Born on the outskirts of London, I've always lived, studied and worked either within or less than half an hour from the capital. I was a non-Catholic 'scholarship girl' at the Ursuline High School, Brentwood, then graduated from Queen Mary College, University of London, in English. I went on to King's College for a post-graduate teaching year, but didn't take up a teaching post until much later. I worked as a freelance writer for a while - stories, articles and children's books - until starting a family. Although a card-carrying feminist, I loved - and still love - being a mother, and elected to stay home and look after my two amazing children until they started school, when I took up a teaching post at my old secondary school.
I had a number of short stories published and was working on longer things, too - 'learning the craft' - and at some point I went back to uni (part-time) and took an MA in modern literature, then a Ph.D (on the work of contemporary novelist Christine Brooke-Rose) - both at Birkbeck College, University of London (a marvellous place!).
After a number of 'near misses' with getting a full-length work published, my novel Zade (set in Paris) was accepted for publication by Saqi Books, and came out in 2004. It made a long-list of twelve books for the Prince Maurice Prize (for writing about love). I was over-awed to find that Zadie Smith (whom I really admire) was also on the long-list (though even she didn't make it to the final three!).
Soon after this I took an editing qualification, left teaching, and worked as a freelance editor for a while - though continuing to work on my own writing when I could.
It was during a trip to Athens in early 2008 that my husband, Malcolm Burgess, had the idea for our urban anthologies and we set up Oxygen Books. For some time we'd liked the idea of setting up our own small publishing house, but it needed that 'concrete idea' - about what we should publish that no-one else seemed to be doing - in order to justify such an all-consuming venture.
Nine anthologies (paris, London, Berlin, Venice, Dublin, Amsterdam, New York, St Petersburg and Istanbul) and lots of good reviews later, we feel we have achieved something worthwhile. We're now both finding a bit more time for our own writing again, while continuing our publishing venture.
I'm currently putting together a collection of my short stories (a number of these have already been published in the UK and USA) and making a tentative selection. It will be called Talking to Genghis Khan. Do let me know what you think of the title!
I'm co-founder of Oxygen Books and have edited all nine of the volumes in our city-pick series of travel anthologies.
Before setting up Oxygen Books in 2008, I had published a range of things - children's stories, poetry, short stories, articles, and a novel (Zade, Saqi Books 2004). Now that Oxygen Books is ticking over, I'm getting back to some of my own writing again. My novel Miranda Road and two non-fiction books, An Everywhere: a little book about reading and Bookworms, Dog-Ears & Squashy Big Armchairs: A Book Lover's Alphabet, published in 2014, was Reader's Digest Christmas Book of the Month which was very exciting!
This summer my 'fiftysomething' novel Perfectly Fine is out (I guess it must be a beach read as the cover has some rather lovely coloured pebbles on sand - actually made on Aldeburgh beach by my granddaughter Abigail Reyes.)
Talking it over with Genghis Khan, my rather quirky first short story collection, is out this autumn. I think readers will either love or hate it - I hope it's the former! Do let me know either way.
I hope this website gives you the information you need - I guess it depends on why you've looked me up! - but if not, please feel free to contact me at heather@oxygenbooks.co.uk
ABOUT ME ...
Born on the outskirts of London, I've always lived, studied and worked either within or less than half an hour from the capital. I was a non-Catholic 'scholarship girl' at the Ursuline High School, Brentwood, then graduated from Queen Mary College, University of London, in English. I went on to King's College for a post-graduate teaching year, but didn't take up a teaching post until much later. I worked as a freelance writer for a while - stories, articles and children's books - until starting a family. Although a card-carrying feminist, I loved - and still love - being a mother, and elected to stay home and look after my two amazing children until they started school, when I took up a teaching post at my old secondary school.
I had a number of short stories published and was working on longer things, too - 'learning the craft' - and at some point I went back to uni (part-time) and took an MA in modern literature, then a Ph.D (on the work of contemporary novelist Christine Brooke-Rose) - both at Birkbeck College, University of London (a marvellous place!).
After a number of 'near misses' with getting a full-length work published, my novel Zade (set in Paris) was accepted for publication by Saqi Books, and came out in 2004. It made a long-list of twelve books for the Prince Maurice Prize (for writing about love). I was over-awed to find that Zadie Smith (whom I really admire) was also on the long-list (though even she didn't make it to the final three!).
Soon after this I took an editing qualification, left teaching, and worked as a freelance editor for a while - though continuing to work on my own writing when I could.
It was during a trip to Athens in early 2008 that my husband, Malcolm Burgess, had the idea for our urban anthologies and we set up Oxygen Books. For some time we'd liked the idea of setting up our own small publishing house, but it needed that 'concrete idea' - about what we should publish that no-one else seemed to be doing - in order to justify such an all-consuming venture.
Nine anthologies (paris, London, Berlin, Venice, Dublin, Amsterdam, New York, St Petersburg and Istanbul) and lots of good reviews later, we feel we have achieved something worthwhile. We're now both finding a bit more time for our own writing again, while continuing our publishing venture.
I'm currently putting together a collection of my short stories (a number of these have already been published in the UK and USA) and making a tentative selection. It will be called Talking to Genghis Khan. Do let me know what you think of the title!
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 14, 2017
Excellent anthology of writing - from articles to fiction about London. Managed quite well given the wealth of potential material. It would have been nice to include the dates of the pieces with the segment, rather than have to dig through to the bibliography at the back. The date is significant and while I can see the role of classic literature, other writing (e.g. from the 1980s) seemed potentially a little dated. But I might be able to place it better with a date. I'm inspired to look out for some of the texts used though I think there was too frequent use of some of the same sources, making me wonder if it'd be better to just read them. More a parallel guide book than an anthology of literature inspired by the city.
August 12, 2018
I do like this series - excerpts about the city of London from various books (fiction and non-fiction). It's great for giving you a little taste of what the city is like. And bonus - I've find some new things that I want to read when I'm travelling there soon!
December 17, 2013
The amuse bouche of city literary writing - LONDON
I am a Londoner by birth and so I was keen to read city-lit London, and was charmed by the chosen passages from top authors. For me it was like having a box of chocolates, each featured author just captured the feel of parts of the city. Observations about queuing or food habits, or the great North/South Divide (referring of course to the Thames that divides the city). Pageantry in the capable hands of Jan Morris (A Writer's World); Colin MacInnes extolls the virtues of the Thames embankment; fictional character Henry Perowne gazes across the city in Iain McEwan's novel Saturday; the run down streets of Hackney contrast with the wealth of the city, and Brick Lane comes to technicolor life in Monica Ali's capable hands.
I revisited my home city through the fresh eyes of authors both contemporary and historical and this is a wonderful way to connect with and understand the bustling metropolis.
I am a Londoner by birth and so I was keen to read city-lit London, and was charmed by the chosen passages from top authors. For me it was like having a box of chocolates, each featured author just captured the feel of parts of the city. Observations about queuing or food habits, or the great North/South Divide (referring of course to the Thames that divides the city). Pageantry in the capable hands of Jan Morris (A Writer's World); Colin MacInnes extolls the virtues of the Thames embankment; fictional character Henry Perowne gazes across the city in Iain McEwan's novel Saturday; the run down streets of Hackney contrast with the wealth of the city, and Brick Lane comes to technicolor life in Monica Ali's capable hands.
I revisited my home city through the fresh eyes of authors both contemporary and historical and this is a wonderful way to connect with and understand the bustling metropolis.
October 23, 2013
This is a book dedicated to the city of London and people’s opinions of the city. It is a collection of abstracts taken from other books from a variety of authors both well known to me and those more unfamiliar. The chapters are split into different sections relating to different areas, people or characters of the city, ranging from the Thames to Pomposity and Ceremony. I don’t know London particularly well but I didn’t feel that this book gave me a sense of feeling of the place as other books within the series. I was hoping to find new locations to discover myself and while it provided some different opinions, I didn’t feel I really learnt anything and this was a disappointment for me. I didn’t even find new authors or books I feel like reading as I have done with other books in the series.
January 29, 2013
I visited London several times but after reading this well done literary guide book of the city I realized that I am terribly illiterate when it comes to really appreciating the city. A collection of literary descriptions of London, this guide is not exclusively for doctors in literature, but for anyone that would love to understand the city beyond the short description from the classical tourist guides. Thanks to this guide I got in my travel pocket the key to better understanding the city and a fresh new map of people and ideas.
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August 15, 2014Wonderful excerpts from a range of literature on London. A mix of historical and more recent fiction and non-fiction covering diverse views of the city. Great inspiration for travel and pointers for further reading.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews