London has been the setting for many works of literature. The literary centres of London have traditionally been hilly Hampstead and (since the early 20th century) Bloomsbury. Writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London, and Virginia Woolf, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the 20th century.
Is there an answer to this question (If it cannot be answered, say "unanswerable"): Which author's novels painted a dismal portrait of Victorian London?
Charles Dickens