River Thames

:This article is about the River Thames in southern England. For other meanings of the word Thames, see Thames (disambiguation)

Literature

Many books refer to the Thames. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome describes a boat trip up the Thames. Somewhere near the Oxford stretch is where the Liddells were rowing in the poem at the start of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The river is mentioned in both The Wind in the Willows and the play Toad of Toad Hall. The utopian News from Nowhere is mainly the account of a journey through the Thames valley in a socialist future.

Related Topics:
Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - The Wind in the Willows - Toad of Toad Hall - News from Nowhere

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In books set in London there is Sherlock Holmes looking for a boat in The Sign of Four; in Oliver Twist, Bill Sikes kills Nancy just near the river. Also, Dickens' late mystery novel Our Mutual Friend begins with a scavenger and his daughter pulling a dead man from the river, to legally salvage what the body might have in its pockets. Dickens opens the novel with this sketch of the river, and the people who work on it:

Related Topics:
Sherlock Holmes - The Sign of Four - Oliver Twist - Our Mutual Friend

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In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in.

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The Thames also features prominently in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, as a communications artery for the waterborne Gyptian people of Oxford and the Fens.

Related Topics:
Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials - Trilogy - Gyptian

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In poetry, T.S. Eliot references the Thames at the beginning of The Fire Sermon, Section III of "The Wasteland".

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