The Great Fire of London (novel)

This article is about the 1982 novel. For the event of 1666, see Great Fire of London.

The Great Fire of London

First edition
Author	Peter Ackroyd
Language	English
Publisher	Hamish Hamilton
Publication date	28 January 1982
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	192
ISBN	0-241-10704-0
OCLC	12500258

The Great Fire of London is a novel by the English author Peter Ackroyd.

Published in 1982, it is Ackroyd's first novel. It established themes which Ackroyd returns to again and again in his fiction: London, English literature and the intertwining (and blurring) of literary, historical and contemporary events.

Summary

Spenser Spender is a film director, trying to get an ambitious project to adapt Charles Dickens' novel Little Dorrit to the big screen. His marriage is disintegrating, although he cannot perceive it. Rowan Phillips, a gay Cambridge don, is enlisted to write the screenplay. Rowan is mildly infatuated with Timothy, whose girlfriend Audrey is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, precipitated by a subconscious identification with the character of Little Dorrit. Arthur, incarcerated at the prison adjacent to Spenser's film set, relives a delusional obsession based on a Little Dorrit-like character, one which had led to his imprisonment for the murder of a young girl.

As production of the film gets underway, the lives of the principal characters gradually converge until they coincide at a latter-day conflagration at the site of Marshalsea Prison, Dickens' location for the original novel.

Critical Reception

The novel received generally positive reviews on its publication, although many reviewers have subsequently reassessed it in the light of Hawksmoor three years later, which had a similar focus albeit with a different historical perspective. Ackroyd however has dismissed the novel outright.