Work of Words

Explores the connection between writers' desire to prove that they 'work' and parallel histories of craft and artisanal revival Offers the first sustained study of the connection between writers' desire to prove that they 'work' and parallel forms of craft and artisanal revival Offers a long view on writers consciously demonstrating 'work', running from the early nineteenth century into the period of modernism Addresses timely concerns, including anti-capitalism, histories of slavery, and nostalgia for physical production Combines a broad history of ideas with close textual readings that respect the particularity of writers' decisions and the formal character of literature as art Encompasses an ambitiously wide range of genres and sources, including poetry, novels, letters, visual art, journalism, lectures, exhibition catalogues, radio broadcasts, and diaries Rather than focus on the well-known 'dignity of literature' debate, whereby authors such as Dickens sought to establish authorship as a middle-class profession, The Work of Words considers the alternative path of middle-class writers who re-presented literature as a manual craft. Unlike many works in the field, it extends beyond the mid-Victorian novel as a generic and historical focus, to address its aesthetic and political afterlife right up to the periods of Guild Socialism, modernism and European fascism. Given the tilt of world trade towards China, and more recent supply chain shocks, it is not just writers who are haunted by a lost world of material production, but much of the de-industrialised West. By studying the Victorian attempt to make composition (and related mental processes) palpable, this book takes the long view on questions that still trouble us, and responds to recent concerns, whether as manifested through the revival of craft and workshop culture, or debates about the visibility, weight and worth of the humanities.

Marcus Waithe is University Senior Lecturer; and Fellow in English, Magdalene College, University of Cambridge. His published books include Thinking through Style: Non-Fiction Prose of the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. with Michael Hurley (OUP, 2018), The Labour of Literature in Britain and France: Authorial Work Ethics, ed. with Claire White (Palgrave, 2018) and William Morris’s Utopia of Strangers: Victorian Medievalism and the Ideal of Hospitality (D.S. Brewer, 2006).