London in fiction

Folklore

• Dick Whittington and His Cat

Early fiction

• Geoffrey Chaucer — The Canterbury Tales
• Daniel Defoe — A Journal of the Plague Year, ''Moll Flanders''

19th century fiction

• Many of Charles Dickens' most famous novels are at least partially set in London; including: Oliver Twist, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• William Makepeace Thackeray — Vanity Fair
• Mark Twain — The Prince and the Pauper
• Henry James — The Princess Casamassima, A London Life, What Maisie Knew, In the Cage
• Oscar Wilde — The Picture of Dorian Gray
• H. G. Wells — The Invisible Man, ''The War of the Worlds''

20th century fiction

• G. K. Chesterton — his allegorical works The Napoleon of Notting Hill and The Man Who Was Thursday both feature surreal depictions of London
• Joseph Conrad — The Secret Agent
• J. M. Barrie — Peter and Wendy
• Marie Belloc Lowndes — The Lodger
• D. H. Lawrence — Sons and Lovers
• P. G. Wodehouse — in his Jeeves and Wooster novels, Wooster lives mainly in London, and is a member of the Drones Club
• T. S. Eliot — his long poem The Waste Land makes frequent reference to the Unreal City
• Virginia Woolf — Mrs Dalloway
• Evelyn Waugh — Vile Bodies
• Aldous Huxley — Brave New World
• P. L. Travers — Mary Poppins Takes place on Cherry Tree Lane and at the Bank of England
• Patrick Hamilton — 20,000 Streets Under the Sky
• George Orwell — Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Nineteen Eighty-Four
• Cameron McCabe — The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor
• T. H. White — The Sword in the Stone
• Patrick Hamilton — Hangover Square
• Patrick White — The Living and the Dead
• Norman Collins — London Belongs to Me
• Elizabeth Bowen — The Heat of the Day
• Agatha Christie — Crooked House
• John Wyndham — The Day of the Triffids
• Graham Greene — The End of the Affair, The Destructors
• Dodie Smith — The Hundred and One Dalmatians
• Michael Bond — A Bear Called Paddington
• Colin MacInnes — Absolute Beginners, Mr Love and Justice
• Iris Murdoch — A Severed Head
• Muriel Spark — The Girls of Slender Means
• Doris Lessing — The Four-Gated City
• Michael Moorcock — the Jerry Cornelius stories : Mother London, King of the City
• Thomas Pynchon — Gravity's Rainbow
• Maureen Duffy — Capital: a Fiction
• Julian Barnes — Metroland
• Peter Ackroyd — The Great Fire of London , Hawksmoor, English Music, The House of Doctor Dee, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem
• Alan Moore — V for Vendetta, From Hell
• Martin Amis — Money, London Fields
• Iain Banks — Walking on Glass
• Tom Clancy — Patriot Games
• Hanif Kureishi — The Buddha of Suburbia
• Vertigo (DC Comics) — Hellblazer
• Salman Rushdie — The Satanic Verses
• Josephine Hart — Damage
• Bernice Rubens — A Solitary Grief
• Barbara Vine — King Solomon's Carpet
• Nick Hornby — Fever Pitch - A Fan's Life, High Fidelity, About a Boy
• Will Self — Grey Area
• Helen Fielding — Bridget Jones's Diary
• Neil Gaiman — Neverwhere is set partly in real London, and partly in an alternative 'London Below'
• Anthony Frewin — London Blues, is set mainly in Soho at the time of the Profumo affair
• Ian McEwan — Enduring Love
• J. K. Rowling — Harry Potter series features fictional London locations: the hidden Diagon Alley, and Platform at King's Cross
• Kouta Hirano — Hellsing manga series casts London as the story's main setting
• William Boyd — ''Armadillo''

21st century fiction

• Hanif Kureishi — Gabriel's Gift
• John Lanchester — Mr Phillips, Capital
• Bernard Cornwell — Gallows Thief
• Philip Reeve — Mortal Engines, A Darkling Plain, Fever Crumb
• Zadie Smith — White Teeth, NW
• Miles Tredinnick — Topless,
• Iain Banks — Dead Air
• William Gibson — Pattern Recognition
• Zoë Heller — Notes on a Scandal
• Adam Thirlwell — Politics
• Neal Stephenson — The Baroque Cycle, The Confusion, The System of the World )
• Monica Ali — Brick Lane
• Ben Elton — Past Mortem
• A. N. Wilson — My Name Is Legion
• Nick Hornby — A Long Way Down
• Ian McEwan — Saturday
• Will Self — The Book of Dave
• Charles Finch — A Beautiful Blue Death, The September Society, The Fleet Street Murders, A Stranger in Mayfair
• Mary Novik — Conceit
• Charlie Fletcher — The Stoneheart
• Anthony Horowitz — Stormbreaker, Eagle Strike, Scorpia, Ark Angel
• Ruth Rendell — Portobello
• Audrey Niffenegger — Her Fearful Symmetry
• DC Comics — Wonder Woman is based in London following The New 52 relaunch of her ongoing series
• Jared Anthony Patterson — My Journey through the Gay Underground of London: Memoir of a Tottenham Boy
• Ben Aaronovitch — Rivers of London, Moon Over Soho, Whispers Under Ground, Broken Homes ''The Hanging Tree The Furthest Station
• Mike Bartlett — 13
• Daniel O'Malley — The Rook
• Robert Galbraith — The Cuckoo's Calling, The Silkworm Career of Evil Lethal White
• Anakana Schofield — Martin John
• Robert J. Sherman — Bumblescratch
• John Roman Baker — Time of Obsessions
• Cassandra Clare — The Clockwork Angel, The Clockwork Prince, The Clockwork Princess
• Jonathan Stroud⁣ — ⁣The Screaming Staircase, The Whispering Skull, The Hollow Boy, The Creeping Shadow, The Empty Grave''
• Deborah Hewitt — The Nightjar
• Garth Nix — The Left-Handed Booksellers of London

Nursery rhymes

• London Bridge is mentioned in London Bridge is falling down.
• Oranges and Lemons mentions several London Churches.
• Pop Goes the Weasel one version refers to the Eagle pub on the City Road.