Transitions in Middlebrow Writing, 1880 - 1930 - by K MacDonald & C Singer (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Transitions in Middlebrow Writing, 1880 - 1930 examines the connections evident between the simultaneous emergence of British modernism and middlebrow literary culture from 1880 to the 1930s. The essays describe the connections, interstices and transitions from the highbrow and lowbrow into the middlebrow, and illustrate the mutual influences of modernist and middlebrow authors, critics, publishers and magazines. This period saw major changes in the literary and artistic tastes of the cultural elites, the publishing houses, the magazines and the reading public, and so the authors explore the influence of modernism outside elitist territories, examining middlebrow literature in its relation to these socio-cultural developments in the marketplace. The essays discuss the authors J M Barrie, Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad, F M Crawford, Gustave Flaubert, John Galsworthy, A S M Hutchinson, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Wallace, and H G Wells; the critics Henry-D. Davray, Herman Robbers and Charles Marriott; and the magazines To-Day and the Mercure de France"--

Book Synopsis

This book examines the connections evident between the simultaneous emergence of British modernism and middlebrow literary culture from 1880 to the 1930s. The essays illustrate the mutual influences of modernist and middlebrow authors, critics, publishers and magazines.

Review Quotes

"Transitions in Middlebrow Writing succeeds in opening up new frameworks. ... its greatest strength is the way in which the collection attempts to open up dialogue between modernist scholars and middlebrow studies; in addition, the edited collection offers fresh insights to historians of reading, reception, and publishing, and to periodical scholars alike." (Victoria Kuttainen, SHARP News, sharpweb.org, July, 2016)

"Including chapter notes and an extensive bibliography, this deftly edited collection is a fine piece of scholarship. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." (C. McCutcheon, Choice, Vol. 53 (8), April, 2016)

"The collection manages admirably to readjust our conceptions of'literary history.' ... this eminently useful and enjoyable collection points the way towards further explorations of shifting and transitional cultural formations." (Anne-Julia Zwierlein, Anglistik, Vol. 27 (1), March, 2016)

About the Author

Juliette Atkinson, University College London, UK Simon Frost, Bournemouth University, UK Alison Hurlburt, University of Alberta, Canada Louise Kane, De Montfort University, UK Kirsten MacLeod, Newcastle University, UK Emma Miller, Durham University, UK Koen Rymenants, Independent Scholar, Belgium Alex Rutten, Open University, the Netherlands Mathijs Sanders, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands Rebecca Sitch, University of Warwick, UK Birgit Van Puymbroeck, Ghent University, Belgium Samantha Walton, Bath Spa University, UK