This page offers information on medieval literary works that are set in London or whose composition in London illustrates the literary/cultural world of the medieval city of London.
Records of Early English Drama Records of Early English Drama (REED) publishes historical evidence about the drama, secular music, and other forms of communal entertainment and ceremony in England from the middle ages up to 1642. The three volumes that cover London are not yet online, but much of the data from the London volumes are included in the searchable Patrons and Performances database.
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- Ecclesiastical London, ed. Mary C. Erler. Records of Early English Drama, 20. Toronto and London: University of Toronto and The British Library, 2008. Includes all references to drama in parish and cathedral records, along with an extensive introduction covering such themes as maying, parish pageants, boy bishops, and Paul’s Cross sermons.
- Inns of Court, ed. Alan Nelson and John Elliott, Jr. Records of Early English Drama, 23, 3 vols. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2010.
- Civic London, ed. Anne Lancashire with David Parkinson. Records of Early English Drama, 24, 3 vols. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2015.
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London Lickpenny “London Lickpenny.” A sometimes comic lament in Middle English verse by a husbandman who has several misadventures visiting London to pursue a complaint at the courts of Westminster. The original text (with helpful glossary) is online, from Medieval English Political Writings, ed. James M. Dean. TEAMS: Medieval English Texts Series, Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996. For a modern English verse version, see https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/london-lickpenny. For a modern English prose version, see http://www.sfsu.edu/~medieval/complaintlit/london_lickpenny.html