British Literature in Transition, 1920–1940: Futility and Anarchy

Explores connections between the social and political upheavals of the interwar years and British literature in that period.

Charles Ferrall (Edited by), Dougal McNeill (Edited by)

9781107145535, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 December 2018

384 pages, 2 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.5 cm, 0.66 kg

'The underlying editorial argument is consistently evident through the book, offering the reader a satisfying sense of congruence and coherence across parts and chapters. The authors also do justice to the aim of the 'British Literature in Transition' series 'to understand literature's role in mediating the developments of the past hundred years … there is much to admire in the way contributors manage to weave together literary works and the social and political histories of the day.' Brian Elliott, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books

Literature from the 'political' 1930s has often been read in contrast to the 'aesthetic' 1920s. This collection suggests a different approach. Drawing on recent work expanding our sense of the political and aesthetic energies of interwar modernisms, these chapters track transitions in British literature. The strains of national break-up, class dissension and political instability provoked a new literary order, and reading across the two decades between the wars exposes the continuing pressure of these transitions. Instead of following familiar markers - 1922, the Crash, the Spanish Civil War - or isolating particular themes from literary study, this collection takes key problems and dilemmas from literature 'in transition' and reads them across familiar and unfamiliar cultural works and productions, in their rich and contradictory context of publication. Themes such as gender, sexuality, nation and class are thus present throughout these essays. Major writers such as Woolf are read alongside forgotten and marginalised voices.

Introduction Charles Ferrall and Dougal McNeill
Part I. After the War: 1. Out of Mrs Colefax's Drawing-Room: poets and poetry between the wars Harry Ricketts
2. Perverting the postwar: sexuality and state violence in women's literature Layne Parish Craig
3. Journeys without maps: literature and spiritual experience Lara Vetter
Part II. Literature after Human Nature Changed: 4. Writing the vote: suffrage, gender, and politics Sowon S. Park and Kathryn Laing
5. Literature and human rights Rachel Potter
6. Psychoanalysis and modernism John Farrell
Part III. Immense Panoramas of Futility and Anarchy: Writing and Politics: 7. History: the past in transition Gabrielle McIntire
8. Women's work? Domestic labour and proletarian fiction Charles Ferrall
9. Ordinary places, intermodern genres: documentary, travel, and literature Kristin Bluemel
10. Bloomsbury conversations that didn't happen: Indian writing between British modernism and anti-colonialism Snehal Shingavi and Charlotte Nunes
Part IV. The First Break-Up of Britain: 11. Between Holyhead and Kingstown: Anglo-Irish perspectives on the character of British fiction Michael G. Cronin
12. Cancer of empire: the Glasgow novel between the wars Liam McIlvanney
13. Lewis Jones and the making of Welsh Identity Shintaro Kono
14. From Optik to Haptik: Celticism, symbols and stones in the 1930s Peter Mackay
Part V. Transitions High and Low: 15. On the home front: designs for living in British drama between the wars Penny Farfan
16. Middlemen, middlebrow, broadbrow Nicola Wilson
17. Detective fiction: resolutions without solutions J. C. Bernthal
18. British literature in transmission: writing and wireless James Purdon.

Subject Areas: Literary reference works [DSR], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literature: history & criticism [DS]