The abject experience of London – in London, for London, through London, despite London, chewed up and spit out by London – ties literary culture across a very long nineteenth century to an even longer lineage in Defoe and others who remarked on its cultural habits in prior centuries. This multi-period history is likewise a cross-genre exploration in which the very grounds of the literary often factor – authorship, style, innovation and reception are but a few of the considerations. London, with its ghastly horrors, also becomes a character in its own right in works such as Poe's ‘Man of the Crowd’, through Dickens's works and the popular penny fictions produced in London's presses, as well as in Bram Stoker's Dracula and later works. This lineage shows a recurring fascination with the mysterious, dark depths of the city's condensed streets and routines. These stories were fed by a rich history of crime fiction – urban and rural – and owed a considerable debt to eighteenthcentury nonfiction accounts of famous criminals executed in London like Jack Sheppard.