This study explores the way the great themes of French and English literature in the past two centuries have been expressed through the writer's sense of place. The author shows how mental landscapes - whether Yorkshire moors or Paris streets - can acquire the force of powerful metaphors. Rural scenes embody regret for a golden past, a vanished innocence; cities come to stand, paradoxically, both for decay and alienation and for hopes of a new life; country houses become repositories of youthful dreams, spritual mansions of the soul. An argument develops, through readings of a host of writers, from Dickens to Zola to Alain-Fournier and Evelyn Waugh.