Hotel London How Victorian Commercial Hospitality Shaped a Nation and Its Storiesampampnbspexamines Victorian Londons grand hotels as both an institution and a culture intimately connected to the urban landscape. In her new study Barbara Black argues that Londons grand hotels provided an essential space for socializing fashioned by concerns relating to class gender and nationality. Rooted in Walter Benjamins new velocities of the nineteenth century and Wayne Koestenbaums hotel theoryampampnbspHotel Londonampampnbspexplores how the emergence of the grand hotel as a physical and metaphorical space helped to construct a consumer economy that underscored Londons internationalism and by extension Englands global status. Incorporating the works of Oscar Wilde Henry James Wilkie Collins Arnold Bennett Florence Marryat and Marie Belloc Lowndes as well as contemporary depictions of the hotels inampampnbspMad MenAmerican Horror StoryampampnbspandampampnbspThe Grand Budapest HotelampampnbspBlack examines how the hotel supported a corporate identity that would ultimately assist in the rise of modern capitalist structures and the middle class. In this wayampampnbspHotel Londonampampnbspexposes the aggravations of class stratifications through the operations of status inside hotel life giving a unique perspective on Victorian London that could only come from the stories of a hotel. ampampnbsp