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

This collection explores British literature from the political 1930s to the aesthetic 1920s, highlighting the transitions and pressures of the two decades between the wars. It takes key problems and dilemmas from literature in transition and reads them across familiar and unfamiliar cultural works and productions, exposing the continuing impact of these transitions on themes such as gender, sexuality, nation and class.

Format: Hardback
Length: 384 pages
Publication date: 20 December 2018
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

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.

Weight: 666g
Dimension: 231 x 166 x 27 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781107145535