Inventing London

Abstract

The public sphere has often been defined as much by those it excludes as by those it includes. In this essay, the author examines the problem of exclusion in the public sphere, focusing on London, England, in the early modern period. She argues that John Stowe's Survey of London (1603) denied the importance of merchant activity & offered a vertical view of London that invented the city as a space in which artisan-citizens were the real Londoners, while the merchants' spatial perspective was alienating & immoral. 68 References. A. Funderburg