Blasted Literature: Victorian Political Fiction and the Shock of Modernism

By connecting Fenian and anarchist violence found in popular fiction from the 1880s to the early 1900s with the avant-garde writing of British modernism, Deagln Donghaile demonstrates that Victorian popular fiction and modernism were directly influenced by the explosive shocks of late nineteenth-century terrorism. For the first time, late-Victorian 'dynamite novels', radical journalism and modernist writing are brought together in provocative readings of Henry James, R L Stevenson, Joseph Conrad and Wyndham Lewis.Key Features*Extensive original archival research from libraries in the UK, Ireland and the US*The first book to examine types of political and literary disruption*Reads Henry James, R L Stevenson and Joseph Conrad in new contexts *Detailed discussion of Wyndham Lewis's avant-garde Vorticist journal BLAST in chapter 4