Description
Book SynopsisHow did social, cultural and political events concerning Britain during the 1940s reshape modern British fiction? During the Second World War and in its aftermath, British literature experienced and recorded drastic and decisive changes to old certainties. Moving from potential invasion and defeat to victory, the creation of the welfare state and a new Cold war threat, the pace of historical change seemed too rapid and monumental for writers to match. Consequently the 1940s were often side-lined in literary accounts as a dividing line between periods and styles. Drawing on more recent scholarship and research, this volume surveys and analyses this period's fascinating diversity, from novels of the Blitz and the Navy to the rise of important new voices with its contributors exploring the work of influential women, Commonwealth, exiled, genre, avant-garde and queer writers. A major critical re-evaluation of the intriguing decade, this book offers substantial chapters on Elizabeth Bo
Trade ReviewThis is an original and very timely contribution to the emergent field of mid-century studies. It offers extended new readings of such indisputably major figures as Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, and George Orwell at the same time as it undertakes some important recoveries of the period’s once-familiar names. This wide-ranging collection will be of interest to any reader hoping to understand better the rich and complex literature of twentieth-century Britain’s most powerfully consequential decade. * Marina MacKay, Professor, St Peter’s College, University of Oxford, UK *
The 1940s brings together top scholars who illuminate the period’s compelling myths and lost cultures, guiding us from literary lodestars like Elizabeth Bowen, George Orwell, and Graham Greene to such fascinating and neglected subjects as Royal Navy novels, women’s fictions of genteel bohemia, and the exile literature of German and Austrian refugees from National Socialism. * Kristin Bluemel, Professor of English, Monmouth University, USA *
Table of ContentsSeries Editors’ Preface Contributors Acknowledgements Critical introduction: Reappraising the 1940s
Philip Tew and Glyn White 1 Their finest hour?: A literary history of the 1940s
Ashley Maher 2 British Blitz fiction of the 1940s: Another finest hour, myth or propaganda?
Philip Tew 3 Genteel Bohemia: Capable women in women’s fiction of the 1940s
Deborah Philips 4 The ship and the nation: Royal Navy novels and the people’s war 1939–45
Chris Hopkins 5 Feeling political: Elizabeth Bowen in the 1940s
Karen Schaller 6 The life of animals: George Orwell’s fiction in the 1940s
Tamás Bényei 7 Masters and servants, class, and the colonies in Graham Greene’s 1940s fiction
Rebecca Dyer 8 Purposes of love: Rethinking intimacy in the 1940s
Charlotte Charteris 9 No concession to ‘English’ taste? Refugees from National Socialism writing in Britain
Andrea Hammel 10 Un-British: The transatlantic crime film connection
Glyn White Timeline of Works Timeline of UK events Timeline of international events Biographies of writers Index
