Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel 1890 - 1930 - (Reading the Novel) by Daniel R Schwarz (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Daniel R. Schwarz has studied and taught the modern British novel for decades and now brings his impressive erudition and critical acuity to this insightful study of the major authors and novels of the first half of the twentieth century.

• An insightful study of British fiction in the first half of the twentieth century.
  
• Draws on the author's decades of experience researching and teaching the modern British novel.
  
• Sets the modern British novel in its intellectual, cultural and literary contexts.
  
• Features close readings of Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, Lawrence's Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow, Joyce's Dubliners and Ulysses, Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse and Forster's A Passage to India.
  
• Shows how these novels are essential components in a modernist cultural tradition which includes the visual arts.
  
• Takes account of recent developments in theory and cultural studies.
  
• Written in an engaging style, avoiding jargon.

From the Back Cover

Daniel R. Schwarz has studied and taught the modern British and Irish novel for decades and now brings his impressive erudition and critical acuity to bear in this insightful study of the major authors and novels from 1890--1930.

After a compelling introduction outlining his method and a substantial first chapter establishing the intellectual, cultural, and literary contexts in which the modern British and Irish novel was produced, Schwarz turns to powerful and sensitive close reading of modernist masterworks. He shows how Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, Lawrence's Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow, Joyce's Dubliners and Ulysses, Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, and Forster's A Passage to India form essential components in a modernist cultural tradition which includes the visual arts.

In his characteristic lucid and readable style, Schwarz's work takes account of recent developments in theory and cultural studies. His persuasive study will not only be invaluable to students and teachers, but will also be of interest to the general reader.

Review Quotes

"[Schwarz's introductions] humanize texts that might otherwise seem too foreboding ... The broadly diverse sense of human interest that results can only dispel any contrary sense of modernism's exclusivity, difficulty or autonomy." James Joyce Quarterly

About the Author

Daniel R. Schwarz is Professor of English and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University, where he has won major teaching prizes. He is the author of the recently published Broadway Boogie Woogie (2003) and the widely read Imagining the Holocaust (1999; rev. edn 2000). His many previous publications include Rereading Conrad (2001), Reconfiguring Modernism (1997), The Transformation of the English Novel, 1890--1930 (1989; rev. edn 1995), and Reading Joyce's "Ulysses" (1987; Centenary edn 2004).