Subterranean Cities: The World beneath Paris and London, 1800–1945

by David L. Pike

The underground has been a dominant image of modern life since the late eighteenth century. A site of crisis, fascination, and hidden truth, the underground is a space at once more immediate and more threatening than the ordinary world above. In Subterranean Cities , David L. Pike explores the representation of underground space in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period during which technology and heavy industry transformed urban life. The metropolis had long been considered a moral underworld of iniquity and dissolution. As the complex drainage systems, underground railways, utility tunnels, and storage vaults of the modern cityscape superseded the countryside of caverns and mines as the principal location of actual subterranean spaces, ancient and modern converged in a mythic space that was nevertheless rooted in the everyday life of the contemporary city. Writers and artists from Felix Nadar and Charles Baudelaire to Charles Dickens and Alice Meynell, Gustave Doré and Victor Hugo, George Gissing and Emile Zola, and Jules Verne and H. G. Wells integrated images of the urban underworld into their portrayals of the anatomy of modern society. Illustrated with photographs, movie stills, prints, engravings, paintings, cartoons, maps, and drawings of actual and imagined urban spaces, Subterranean Cities documents the emergence of a novel space in the subterranean obsessions and anxieties within nineteenth-century urban culture. Chapters on the subways, sewers, and cemeteries of Paris and London provide a detailed analysis of these competing centers of urban modernity. A concluding chapter considers the enduring influence of these spaces on urban culture at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, British Literature, London

374 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2005

Reviews

[Candy Wood]

The opening acknowledgment to the “underground men and women” of research libraries in London and Paris and to their positive responses to change provides a welcome insight into the process of research and sets up an interesting book. Pike shows how Western culture has been fascinated with underground spaces and how the real spaces of Paris and London influenced different literary portrayals. The underground world can be either a place of “segregation and elimination” as in London or of “incorporation and recycling” as in Paris: for example, the schematic map of the London Underground denies connections with the city on the surface, while Paris Métro maps based on the same technique follow the outlines of the medieval city. Images of catacombs, underground mines, sewers, and prostitution, as seen in 19th and 20th-century literature, reflect the same difference. The last chapter, on “Urban Apocalypse,” brings in popular culture and suggests relevance to America today. Many black-and-white illustrations help but could be more clearly printed.

[William · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected better: fascinating material but told in both an academic and stream-of-consciousness style. If you want to know how the subways, sewers, and other underground phenomena of these two cities influenced literature, this is the book to read. If you want to separate fact from art, be prepared to skim quickly.

[Angi M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty interesting book about the changing concept of underground space & the building of the Metro & London Underground. I was hoping for more information about the actual engineering/construction though, and it's only about Paris & London which is really limited. Plus, the guy keeps going off on weird tangents about different books he's read that mention the subways...