Leanne Shapton, author of Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the
Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris and Swimming Studies, creates an authorly and artistic response to
travel, work and being a passenger - part of a series of twelve books tied to the twelve
lines of the London Underground, as Tfl celebrates 150 years of the Tube with Penguin
In Waterloo-City, City-Waterloo, Leanne Shapton creates an authorly and artistic
response to the Waterloo and City line's particular length and those who travel on it.
Shapton observes the particularities of the line's rush-hour passengers and imagines a
number of their interior monologs, in both verbal and visual detail. The variety of
commuters ruminations and obsessions result in a detailed and illustrated breakdown of the
line's distance and time - its brevity, its passage between only two stations, its
existence as almost primarily a shuttle for office workers going between their homes and
the business district of the City. The layout of the book reflects the two stops on the
line, one half of the book representing the Waterloo-City outgoing journey, and the second
half, the City-Waterloo return voyage.
The city is filled with stories. In twelve books, twelve writers tell their tales of
London life, each inspired by a different Underground line. Some are personal, some are
polemical; every one is unique.
Leanne Shapton is an artist, illustrator, and writer who was born in Toronto and lives
in New York. She is the author of Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the
Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and
Jewelry. Her latest book, Swimming Studies, was published July 2012.