Finsbury in Print: from Black Dwarf to Spare Rib

Finsbury’s narrow streets and courts provide the setting for many novels. We pass by novelist Arnold Bennetts’s Riceyman Steps, through George Gissing’s Nether World, see where Dickens’ Oliver Twist first met Mr Brownlow and meet the inspiration for Miss Haversham.
Closely associated with the print trade, Finsbury was also home to many magazines and journals, from the Gentleman’s Magazine of the 18th century, through Lenin’s Iskra to feminist Spare Rib in the 1970s with stories by Margaret Drabble and Edna O’Brien among others.