In The Soul of London (1905) Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) gives a vivid impression of the excitement and challenge of the greatest city of modern times.In its evocation of the growth of London over the centuries and the bewildering variety of the city scene by day and night, the glamour and frivolity of its 'high' life and the hardship and endurance of its working people The Soul of London displays a stylishness and humanity which make it a work of imaginative literature and not a guide book. It is also a prophetic survey of the way modernsociety was developing, and foreshadows the social isolation, anonymity and alienation which were to transform the forms and substance of literature in the twentieth century.