London Urban Fantasy: Places with History

London is one of the more popular settings for urban fantasy, standing out by offering both a great many famous locations and a history of two millennia. This article argues that the city's past is used to create a sense of 'Londonness' by examining ten urban fantasy versions of London. It identifies and analyzes the functions of four prominent elements of history in these texts: the city's origin and pre-origin, the Great Fire of 1666, the periods of building various subterranean tunnels, and the notion that London, at some point, has gone through an architectural Era of Uglification. Through these, London is portrayed as a literary place suitable to urban fantasy: it is a modern city but with a long history reaching back to a beginning where facts and legends mix. This long history gives rise to supernatural entities that hide in the underground tunnels constructed at various points in the city's history.
Urban fantasy means, not surprisingly, fantastic stories about cities, and thus about our modern world. As the number of urban fantasy writers grows, so does the number of locations in [...]