The City Anthology: Definition of a Type

Abstract

This article uses a corpus of over one hundred and fifty Berlin literary anthologies from 1885 to the present to set out the concept of a ‘city anthology’. The city anthology encompasses writing from as well as about the city, and defines itself through a broad sense of connection to the city rather than thematic subject matter as such. This article uses the example of Berlin to set out the unique traits of the city anthology form: the affective connection between authors, editors, readers, texts and the city; diversity of contributors and literary content; and a tendency towards reportage. It further uses the corpus to identify four key types of city anthology – survey, snapshot, retrospective and memory anthology – and to argue for a functional rather than formal definition of the anthology. Finally, Berlin anthologies challenge precepts of that city’s literary history in two key ways: in mapping different historical trajectories across the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, and in particular countering the focus on the much better known city novel. The often-overlooked city anthology thus constitutes a specific form of city literature as well as anthology. As a literary manifestation – not just a representation – of the city, city anthologies inhabit a border space between literary geographies and urban imaginaries with the potential to open up an affective dimension in urban studies. Tweetable abstract: Studying city anthologies can redefine the anthology as well as city literature; key features are diversity and extra-literary focus, underpinned by a sense of connection to the city. With a substantial corpus of such anthologies, Berlin offers an ideal case study of the form.