THOMAS HORNOR AND LONDON’S ‘SECOND LIFE’: From map, to book, to panoramic scene with Peter Otto

This lecture offers an introduction to the multi-faceted oeuvre of Thomas Hornor (1785-1844), who worked as land surveyor, cartographer, landscape gardener, showman, and landscape and panorama artist. It focuses on his experiments with virtual space, which culminated in his remarkable panorama of London and the equally remarkable Colosseum in which it was exhibited. The Colosseum’s immersive virtual realities, and the way in which they were used by visitors, offer a remarkable anticipation of our own, now dominant, ‘second lives’.

PETER OTTO is ARC Research Professor in literary studies at The University of Melbourne. His recent publications include Gothic Fiction: A Guide (2003), Entertaining the Supernatural (2007) and Multiplying Worlds: Romanticism, Modernity and the Emergence of Virtual Reality (OUP 2011). He is completing a book on Gothic Fictions and Imagined Worlds.

Bird’s Eye View from the Staircase and the upper part of the Pavilion in the Colosseum, Regent’s Park (detail), pub. June 1819 by R. Ackermann, London