A01=Jonathan Wild
Author_Jonathan Wild
Category=CFG
Category=DNT
Category=DS
Edwardian Literature
eq_anthologies-novellas-short-stories
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_dictionaries-language-reference
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Late Victorian
Literary Criticism
Literature and Culture
Print Culture
Twentieth-Century Literature
Product details
- ISBN 9780748635061
- Weight: 476g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 24 Jan 2017
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Challenges conventional views of the Edwardian period as either a hangover of Victorianism or a bystander to literary modernism
In this ground-breaking study, Jonathan Wild investigates the literary history of the Edwardian decade. This period, long overlooked by critics, is revealed as a vibrant cultural era whose writers were determined to break away from the stifling influence of preceding Victorianism. In the hands of this generation, which included writers such as Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, Beatrix Potter, and H.G. Wells, the new century presented a unique opportunity to fashion innovative books for fresh audiences. Wild traces this literary innovation by conceptualising the focal points of his study as branches of one of the new department stores that epitomized Edwardian modernity. These ‘departments’ – war and imperialism, the rise of the lower middle class, children’s literature, technology and decadence, and the condition of England – offer both discrete and interconnected ways in which to understand the distinctiveness and importance of the Edwardian literary scene. Overall, The Great Edwardian Emporium offers a long-overdue investigation into a decade of literature that provided the cultural foundation for the coming century.
Jonathan Wild is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. He has published widely on late Victorian and Edwardian topics and is the author of The Rise of the Office Clerk in Literary Culture, 1880-1939 (2006).
