London has been the home of many famous authors and the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are Samuel Pepys, author of the world's most famous Diary with its eyewitness account of the Great Fire of London and life in Restoration London, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a dark, grim and grimy London of street urchins, cruel orphanages, rogues and pickpockets is still a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London. His novels contributed towards arousing public opinion in the cause of reform. The plight of the chimney sweeps and homeless children, the fate of those condemned to a debtors' prison and the urgent need for reform in the legal system were all things that Dickens was determined to call attention to - he never ceased to attack the abuses of Victorian society.
James Boswell's biographical "Life of Samuel Johnson" which was published in 1791, has been acknowledged as one of the greatest biographies in the English language and is the source of Johnson's famous aphorism: "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." Johnson was 53 and already a legend when he first met Boswell.
Dr. Johnson's "Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755 and took him nearly nine years to compile. His aim was to produce a dictionary "by which the pronunciation of our language may be fixed, and its attainment facilitated: by which its purity may be preserved, its use ascertained, and its duration lengthened". The Dictionary was compiled in Dr Johnson's House in Gough Square, just off Fleet Street. When Dr. Johnson died, a friend said: 'Johnson is dead-let us go to the next best:-there is nobody, no man can be said to put you in mind of Johnson.'
A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague in which at least, 70,000 people perished in London alone.
William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London and during 20 amazingly, creative years his output was enormous. He wrote historical dramas such as Henry VI and Richard III, the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet and comedies such as Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It. He constantly met the changing demands of the Elizabethan theatre and his last play The Tempest was regarded as his finest romantic comedy. His contemporary, the playwright, Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work, such as his play The Alchemist, was set in the city. 
Other depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are contained in Arthur Conan Doyle's famous Sherlock Holmes stories which are mostly set in a London of gas lamps, thick fogs and hansom cabs.
The 1933 novel Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell describes life in poverty in both cities. Trafalgar Square is where Orwell slept among tramps and used the fountains to shave. A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor.
Along with Bloomsbury, the hilly area of Hampstead has traditionally been the literary heartland of London.
