The Frenchman Who Invented London: Élisée Reclus’s Geographies of the Cité Mondiale , 1860–1879

The French anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus (1830–1905) dedicated several hundred pages to London. Addressing different audiences and adopting different tones accordingly, he produced travel guides, geographic treatises, and meditations (posthumously published) that recounted contemporary London in various ways. This article examines Reclus's reflections on the city, serving as both a companion for Anglophone readers exploring Reclus's work and an invitation to view London through new eyes—that is, those of a foreign traveller whose conflictual, yet affectional, relationship with London may still describe that of many today. As this article shows, globalisation, progress, environment, and social habits are recurrent themes in his accounts: at times they are approached with considerable scientific rigour, and at others, they immersed in a romantic indefiniteness articulated by way of a frenetic expressive tempo.