The present St Paul's Cathedral, Christopher Wren's masterpiece, is the fourth religious building to occupy the site. Its location in the heart of the capital reflects its importance in the English church while the photographs of it burning during the Blitz forms one of the most powerful and familiar images of London during recent times. This substantial and richly illustrated study, published to mark the 1,400th anniversary of St Paul's, presents 42 scholarly contributions which approach the cathedral from a range of perspectives. All are supported by photographs, illustrations and plans of the exterior and interior of St Paul's, both past and present. Eight essays discuss the history of St Paul's, demonstrating the role of the cathedral in the formation of England's church and state from the 7th century onwards; nine essays examine the organisation and function of the cathedral during the Middle Ages, looking at, for example, the arrangement of the precinct, the tombs, the Dean's household during the 15th century, the liturgy and the archaeology. The remaining papers examine many aspects of Wren's cathedral, including its construction, fittings and embellishments, its estates and income, music and rituals, its place in London, its library, its role in the book trade and its reputation.

Prior to the 1666 fire of London, St Paul's Cathedral was an important central site for religious, commercial, and social life in London. The literature of the period - both fictional and historical - reveals a great interest in the space, and show it to be complex and contested, with multiple functions and uses beyond its status as a church. St Paul's Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture: Spatial Practices animates the cathedral space by focusing on the every day functions of the building, deepening and sometimes complicating previous works on St Paul's. St Paul's Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture is a study of London's cathedral, its immediate surroundings, and its everyday users in early modern literary and historical documents and images, with special emphasis on the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It discusses representations of several of the seemingly discrete spaces of the precinct to reveal how these spaces overlap with and inform one another spatially, and argues that specific locations should be seen as mutually constitutive and in a dynamic and ever-evolving state. The varied uses of the precinct, including the embodied spatial practices of early modern Londoners and visitors, are examined, including the walkers in the nave, sermon-goers, those who shopped for books, the residents of the precinct, the choristers, and those who were devoted to church repairs and renovations.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1977.