Iain Sinclair, Rodinsky's Room

Robert Bond (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1999

Places

Wales (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Commentary / Criticism (literary)
Essays/ Lectures (any)

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Rodinsky's Room

, published in 1999, is primarily a work of local cultural history. The book can be described as a mythography for Spitalfields, in that it historicizes the formation of the Rodinsky myth within the cultural consciousness of London. The local myth of David Rodinsky had already been reflected upon by Patrick Wright in his 1987

LRB

essay “Rodinsky's Place”, and by Sinclair in a

Guardian

article which, when expanded, became the fifth chapter of his 1991 novel

Downriver

. Whilst

Rodinsky's Room

represents the summation of Sinclair's long-term interest in Rodinsky, in this text Sinclair takes the new step of co-writing with Rachel Lichtenstein, an artist who had made photographic work archiving Rodinsky's belongings, and about whose work Sinclair had written in his

Lights Out

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2066 words

Citation: Bond, Robert. "Rodinsky's Room". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 April 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2336, accessed 18 April 2024.]

Save this article