Neighbours and Rivals

The first work of great French journalist Louis-Sébastien Mercier, this seminal work of travel writing remained unpublished for over 200 years.
Mercier first travelled to London, and began recording his impressions, in 1780. An exemplar of a new form of journalistic, reflective literature, he presented emotive representations of the city as collections of experiences, habits and personalities. And differently from Dickens’s London or Baudelaire’s Paris, with their contrasts of opulence and misery, Mercier describes a less familiar urban environment – more optimistic, perhaps even utopian. His version of London is, in fact, a projection of his philosophical imagination – not simply a rounded portrait but also a reflection of what he hoped Paris could become.

For this first publication in English, Laurent Turcot and Jonathan Conlin’s translation preserves the life and humour of Mercier’s text. It is illustrated with contemporary images, with an emphasis on Thomas Rowlandson and Gabriel-Jacques de Saint-Aubin, the first Parisian flâneur-artist.