Retitled 'Arcadian London' in collected editions of the series
The theme of the present item – London during the Autumn recess of Parliament – was something of a set piece for Victorian sketch-writers: three essays all entitled 'Out of Town' by Dickens, Thackeray and Edmund Yates make interesting parallel reading (see HW, Vol. XII, 29 September 1855; Punch, Vol. 17 [II, 18 August 1849], pp. 53, 66–69; repr. in Miscellanies, 1854-57, Vol. II, p. 279f.; After Office Hours, 1861, Ch. 8). The title and subsequent development of this paper plays on the word Arcadia, as the traveller's Autumn lodgings are in London's fashionable West End, close to the Burlington Arcade, a permanent covered shopping mall of a kind becoming common in London and other European capitals. In a literary context, however, 'Arcadia' was celebrated in the pastoral tradition as the home of the most primitive of the Ancient Greek peoples, those least corrupted by civilisation.
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