Modernism in the arts, and particularly literature, has often been portrayed as a middle class pursuit, with certain literary critics focusing on the ‘elitism’ of the movement. But does this give a true picture of its social composition?
This week, Tom Overton talks to Nick Hubble about their new book The Proletarian Answer to the Modernist Question (https://euppublishingblog.com/2017/09/07/proletarian-modernism/), and about how the General Strike of 1926 (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/writing-the-1926-general-strike/41A4BEF1FB2C099EEEFD60A5F14C0B80), the Equal Franchise Act 1928 and the Great Depression shaped working class forms of modernism during the 1930s.
(Cover image: 'Acetylene Wielding' (1917) by C.R.W. Nevinson)
SELECTED REFERENCES
W. H. Auden
Octavia Butler
LEWIS CARROLL, The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland (1865)
Chung Ling Soo (magician)
T. S. Eliot
WILLIAM EMPSON, Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Types_of_Ambiguity
EMPSON, Some Versions of Pastoral (1935) – https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/empson-style-from-despair
Ford Madox Ford
JOHN GAY, The Beggar’s Opera (1728)
Lewis Grassic Gibbon – https://www.grassicgibbon.com
WALTER GREENWOOD, Love on the Dole (1933) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIPubjjouaA
J. B. S. Haldane – https://wellcomelibrary.org/collections/digital-collections/makers-of-modern-genetics/digitised-archives/j-b-s-haldane
Richard Hoggart
NICK HUBBLE, 'Proletarian Autofiction of the 1930s' (2019) - https://socialhumanities.home.blog/2019/03/10/proletarian-autobiografiction-of-the-1930s
SAMUEL HYNES, The Auden Generation (1976) – https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-auden-generation-by-samuel-hynes/
JAMES JOYCE, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916); Ulysses (1922)
D. H. LAWRENCE, ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ (1909) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odour_of_Chrysanthemums
D. H. LAWRENCE, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)
Doris Lessing
MARGARET LLEWELLYN DAVIES (ed.), Life as We Have Known It (1930) – https://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?id=4294981756
Charles Madge – http://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/speccoll/collection_descriptions/madge.html
Mass Observation – https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/09/11/surveillance-society
NAOMI MITCHISON, We Have Been Warned (1935) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Mitchison
BILL NAUGHTON, Alfie (1963) – https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/dec/06/thebestevernovelform
Friedrich Nietzsche
GEORGE ORWELL, The Road to Wigan Pier (1936); Homage to Catalonia (1938)
GEORGE ORWELL, ‘The Writer in the Witness Box’ (1940) – https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-proletarian-writer
Alan Partridge
Jackson Pollock
Proletkult
Ann Quin
Karl Radek – https://www.marxists.org/archive/radek/1934/sovietwritercongress.htm
Lorna Sage
Stephen Spender
Agnes Smith – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2082201.An_Edge_of_the_Forest
JOHN SOMMERFIELD, May Day (1936) – http://ojs.ub.gu.se/ojs/index.php/njes/article/view/1262
August Strindberg
Edward Upward – http://www.edwardupward.info/
H. G. Wells
ELLEN WILKINSON, Clash (1929) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clash_(novel)
Raymond Williams
VIRGINIA WOOLF, Mrs. Dalloway (1925); Orlando (1928); The Years (1936); Three Guineas (1938)
