A History of 1930s British Literature
A History of 1930s British Literature
Matthew Taunton, University of East Anglia
$129.00
USDThis History offers a new and comprehensive picture of 1930s British literature. The '30s have often been cast as a literary-historical anomaly, either as a 'low, dishonest decade', a doomed experiment in combining art and politics, or as a 'late modernist' afterthought to the intense period of artistic experimentation in the 1920s. By contrast, the contributors to this volume explore the contours of a 'long 1930s' by repositioning the decade and its characteristic concerns at the heart of twentieth-century literary history. This book expands the range of writers covered, moving beyond a narrow focus on towering canonical figures to draw in a more diverse cast of characters, in terms of race, gender, class, and forms of artistic expression. The book's four sections emphasize the decade's characteristic geographical and sexual identities; the new media landscapes and institutional settings its writers operated in; questions of commitment and autonomy; and British writing's international entanglements.
- Offers a new understanding of a key transformational moment in British literary history
- Includes work on institutional history, mid-century literature and culture, little magazines, and newly accessible archives
- Situates the decade at the centre of twentieth-century literary culture as a 'long 1930s'
Reviews & endorsements
'… a vast compendium edited by Benjamin Kohlmann and Matthew Taunton, full of penetrating insights into a decade one had previously thought over-explored.' D. J. Taylor, The Times Literary Supplement
'… essay after essay shows careful study, archival attention, and a strong editorial hand … the editors have done a fine job of presenting an interesting array of research which certainly does some fine direction pointing for future research.' Matthew Chambers, The Modernist Review
'The range, intelligence, originality and scholarship of its essays make this a valuable collection.' Alistair Davies, Textual Practice
‘The volume supports and extends scholarship that recognizes the decade’s connections to as well as departures from modernism, and that seeks to more closely understand the distinctive forms and practices, and broadening networks of writers and professionals in the cultural sphere, that emerged during the thirties … This volume showcases the breadth, diversity and vitality of 1930s cultural texts and producers (stretching the purely literary to other media including music, film, and radio), and offers an invaluable resource for students and scholars.’ Naomi Milthorpe, The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914–1945
'Kohlmann and Taunton have assembled a thrilling collection of essays that provide diverse and distinct entry points into the long, wide, and urgent 1930s.' Michael McCluskey, Modernism/Modernity
Product details
June 2019Hardback
9781108474535
474 pages
235 × 158 × 30 mm
0.81kg
9 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction: the long 1930s Benjamin Kohlmann and Matthew Taunton
- Part I. Mapping a New Decade: Geographies and Identities:
- 1. Beyond Englishness: the regional and rural novel in the 1930s Kristin Bluemel
- 2. Uncanny cities: urban geographies and metropolitan life in the 1930s Emma Zimmerman
- 3. The making of the working class: proletarian writing in the 1930s Nick Hubble
- 4. Professional women writers Kristin Ewins
- 5. Queer communist formations: coterie, counterpublic, cell Glyn Salton-Cox
- Part II. Media Histories and the Institutions of Literature:
- 6. Circulating literature: libraries, bookshops, and book clubs Andrew Thacker
- 7. Literature and education in the long 1930s Matthew Taunton
- 8. International PEN: writers, free expression, organisations Rachel Potter
- 9. The new reading public: modernism, popular literature, and the paperbacks Vike Martina Plock
- 10. Debatable ground: journalism, pamphlets, and social critique Peter Marks
- 11. 'Hypocrite auditeur, mon semblable, mon frère': literature and the border of the radio public Ian Whittington
- 12. Talking films Laura Marcus
- 13. Telemediations James Purdon
- Part III. Commitment and Autonomy:
- 14. Ambiguity run riot: film-mindedness in the 1930s avant garde Rod Mengham
- 15. 'A vein of insularity': British music in the long 1930s Louise Wiggins
- 16. Representing fascism in 1930s literature Tyrus Miller
- 17. The documentary impulse Leo Mellor
- 18. Religion, modernism and Anglo-agnostics: (un) belief and fiction in the 1930s Suzanne Hobson
- 19. The colonial state and transnational welfare during the 1930s Depression Janice Ho
- 20. The scientific imagination and the politics of objectivity Boris Jardine
- Part IV. The Global 1930s: Conflict and Change:
- 21. Anglo-Soviet literary relations in the long 1930s John Connor
- 22. A declining empire in a rising power: British writers in America Greg Barnhisel
- 23. Late modernism and the Spanish Civil War Patricia Rae
- 24. Total war Marina MacKay
- 25. Colonial intellectuals and the aesthetic Cold War Peter Kalliney
- 26. Imperial fictions: writing the end of empire Laura Winkiel.
