Product Description

This text provides a reinterpretation of London during a period of dramatic change, and presents ways of understanding the coming modernity through the transformation of urban landscapes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #618669 in Books
• Published on: 1998-07-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 340 pages

Review
"The image of modernity created in "Spaces of Modernity" is a coherent one....In all of the spaces he examines...Ogborn successfully navigates between the Scylla of grand theoretical claims and the Charybdis of the almost inevitably idiographic concerns of tradional historical geography. Any readers interested in adding to their deeper understanding of modernity will undoubtedly find Ogborn's exceeding well-written Odyssey riveting and rewarding....I could only marvel at the ease with which Ogborn weaves together the particular and the general into anew and exciting narrative." --"Journal of Urban History"
"By moving smoothly from philosophical understandings of modernity, the individual, and the public sphere to geographies, stories, incidents, and objects in which these ideas can be seen at play, Ogborn tells a complex and fascinating tale. Ogborn has a wide range of analytical methods at his disposal and wields them all well, employing paintings, prints, maps, newspaper accounts, plays, and a wide variety of other texts to paint complex and lively vignettes of modernity in process." --"Research in Philosophy and Technology"
"This book is important for the depth of its critical analysis of London's place (and the places of London) in the formulation of modernity....Those who wish to theoretically explore the fundamental changes that were taking place in eighteenth-century society, and how they were variously formulated in the London context, need to read this book attentively." --"The London Journal"
.,."offers consistently illuminating ways to examine transformations of institutions, experiences and identities. This book offers a clearly configured historical geography ofeighteenth-century London that will be of considerable interest to historians, geographers and anyone else interested in the culture of the period." --"Journal for Maritime Research"
.,."takes a penetrating and fascinating look at...the idea of modernity...and by so doing breathes new life into the discipline of historical geography...."Spaces of modernity" offers us the best of what historical geography promises: to provide contextual and dynamic understandings of our past though interrogations of the specificity of space and place." -"-Progress in Human Geography"
"Ogborn offers his readers a richly varied view of modernity....The variety of contexts and institutions included in the compass of his book nicely illustrates an alternative to the totalizing and rationalizing view of modernity which he rejects." --"Cahiers de Geographie du Quebec"
"[An] excellent study of the geographies of late 17th and 18th century London....Each...essay...is a beautifully constructed meditation on a dimension of the experience of modernity, carefully interpolating between theory and detailed contextual research...."Spaces of Modernity" is an enthralling and provocative tour through key sites in the making of the modern world." --"Space & Polity"
"Ogborn's rich and imaginative study considers several particular spaces, places, and landscapes...to elucidate the social transformations that are diagnostic of modernity....Sensitively illustrated, profusely footnoted, and well indexed, this study is at once an interesting piece of historical research and a provocative theoretical statement. Upper-division undergraduates and above." --"Choice"

From the Back Cover
This text provides a reinterpretation of London during a period of dramatic change, and presents ways of understanding the coming modernity through the transformation of urban landscapes. The book starts an exploration of the major theoretical approaches to modernity. This is followed by studies of a number of sites within London that demonstrate the coming of modernity. The history and organization of Magdalen Hospital, the paving and lighting of Westminster, Vauxhall's pleasure gardens, and other are presented and given novel reinterpretation. This book should be of interest to those interested in the history of London or England, as well as those with an interest in cultural studies or 18th-century history.