Literature of the 1950s: Good, Brave Causes - (Edinburgh History of Twentieth-Century Literature in Britain) by Alice Ferrebe (Paperback)

About the Book

Challenges the myths about apathy and smugness surrounding British literature of the period.

Book Synopsis

Challenges the myths about apathy and smugness surrounding British literature of the period. Alice Ferrebe's lively study rereads the decade and its literature as crucial in twentieth-century British history for its emergent and increasingly complicated politics of difference, as ideas about identity, authority and belonging were tested and contested. By placing a diverse selection of texts alongside those of the established canon of Movement and 'Angry' writing, a literary culture of true diversity and depth is brought into view. The volume characterises the 1950s as a time of confrontation with a range of concerns still avidly debated today, including immigration, education, the challenging behaviour of youth, nuclear threat, the post-industrial and post-imperial legacy, a consumerist economy and a feminist movement hampered by the perceivedly comprehensive nature of its recent success. Contrary to Jimmy Porter's defeatist judgement on his era in John Osborne's 1956 play Look Back in Anger, the volume upholds such concerns as 'good, brave causes' indeed.

Review Quotes

Shrewd, lucid and perceptive, Alice Ferrebe's splendid book shows how the supposedly greyest of post-war decades was, in fact, an age of tremendous imagination, diversity and confrontation. From Amis and Larkin to Osborne and Fleming, Ferrebe brings new life to the literary world of the 1950s.--Dominic Sandbrook, author of Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles

About the Author

Alice Ferrebe is a Senior Lecturer in English at Liverpool John Moores University, and is the author of Masculinity in Male-Authored Fiction 1950-2000 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).