We are Wanderers: An Exploration of the 1872 Edition of London: A Pilgrimage

London: a Pilgrimage by Blanchard Jerrold and Gustave Dore is a book about looking. By positioning the reader alongside the narrator as a kind of observer, flâneur, and “wanderer”, the book creates an environment in which reader derives pleasure from the act of gazing. Lavishly illustrated and advertised as a sumptuous gift for the holiday season, even the physical form of the 1872 edition demands a kind of pleasurable looking. This thesis will explore how the book both as a text and as a physical artifact enables a scopophilic view of the city of London and its inhabitants, ultimately moving towards a more modernist conception of urbanity.