ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the representation of asylums in British literature and some parallels with historical scholarship in theeld. What emerges is a complex interaction between the popular mythology and the historical reality of asylums. With the sources of careful historiography removed, the potential is for future works to lean ever more heavily upon the mythological rather than the historical. In Austerlitz, the eponymous character relates to the narrator an attempt to locate, through maze-like changing walls, the resonance of past su ering accumulated over centuries at the former site of the St Mary of Bethlehem asylum, Liverpool Street Station, undergoing extensive renovation. Atrst Taylor is bewildered by the changes to the asylum, evoking the Gothic in her description of passages that lead to nowhere and convoluted ‘womblike rooms’, arched ceilings and ‘odd little corners.
