Culture and Crisis in Britain in the Thirties

Culture and Crisis in Britain in the Thirties PDF Author: Jon Clark (Ph. D.)
Publisher: Lawrence & Wishart
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description

Culture and Crisis in Britain in the Thirties

Culture and Crisis in Britain in the Thirties PDF Author: Jon Clark (Ph. D.)
Publisher: Lawrence & Wishart
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description


English Journeys

English Journeys PDF Author: Peter Lowe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781604978131
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
For many people, life in post-World War I England was materially and socially harsh, arguably worse than it had been before 1914. Declining agricultural wages led to a depopulation of the countryside and a drift towards towns and cities in search of work, but the industrial foundations upon which the might of the Victorian empire had been built were far from stable. As the effects of a global depression permeated every aspect of the nation's economic life, the social costs of industrialisation, so often written off as the necessary cost of progress, became impossible to ignore. Rarely can this awkward relationship between the England of the history books and the England of the economic slump have been illustrated more effectively than in the 1936 Jarrow Crusade - a march to London from the town of Jarrow in the North-East, where the unemployment rate reached 40% in the mid-1930s after the closure of the shipyards. Slowly, but with grim resolution, the ranks of unemployed men, sometimes accompanied by relatives and supporters, wove their way down the spine of England towards the capital, where they hoped to petition the government for a package of economic recovery that would breathe life back into their shattered community. For the writers and artists of the period this tension offered rich material for study, and we find in works from this period discussions of the role of the community, the relationship between the individual and the group, the importance of domestic and public space, and the sense of connection (or the lack of it) between the people and the landscape, both natural and man-made. This book is concerned with the period in which the discussion of English identity assumed such importance because it could not be assumed that the nation itself would survive. It is a period in which the problems that had become apparent in the nation's social, economic, and material fabric in the turbulent 1930s, when speaking of there being at least 'two' Englands was something of a commonplace for many observers, were thrown into sharp relief by the prospect of utter destruction at the hands of Hitler's forces. In such a fraught atmosphere, questions of what the nation was, of what was worth preserving and of what, if an opportunity were to be granted, would have to be changed in the future became both urgent and vital. These questions were raised and discussed in many forums and the responses were often varied and rarely bore a true resemblance to the postwar nation that finally emerged; indeed the prevailing mood of postwar writing may be seen as a sense of disillusionment with what rapidly came to look like the lost opportunities of the postwar settlement. The debate over the country's identity, structure, and future direction, however, was certainly real, and many of the issues it stimulated are very much a part of the ongoing discussion of England's identity today. As such, this book is a valuable addition to collections in literature and history.

The Politics of 1930s British Literature

The Politics of 1930s British Literature PDF Author: Natasha Periyan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350019860
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Drawing on a rich array of archival sources and historical detail, The Politics of 1930s British Literature tells the story of a school-minded decade and illuminates new readings of the politics and aesthetics of 1930s literature. In a period of shifting political claims, educational policy shaped writers' social and gender ideals. This book explores how a wide array of writers including Virginia Woolf, W.H. Auden, George Orwell, Winifred Holtby and Graham Greene were informed by their pedagogic work. It considers the ways in which education influenced writers' analysis of literary style and their conception of future literary forms. The Politics of 1930s British Literature argues that to those perennial symbols of the 1930s, the loudspeaker and the gramophone, should be added the textbook and the blackboard.

The Morbid Age

The Morbid Age PDF Author: Richard Overy
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141930861
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
British intellectual life between the wars stood at the heart of modernity. The combination of a liberal, uncensored society and a large educated audience for new ideas made Britain a laboratory for novel ways to understand the world. The Morbid Age opens a window onto this creative but anxious era, the golden age of the public intellectual and scientist: Arnold Toynbee, Aldous and Julian Huxley, H. G. Wells, Marie Stopes and a host of others. Yet, as Richard Overy argues, a striking characteristic of so many of the ideas that emerged from this new age - from eugenics to Freud's unconscious, to modern ideas of pacifism and world government - was the fear that the West was facing a possibly terminal crisis of civilization. The modern era promised progress of a kind, but it was overshadowed by a growing fear of decay and death, an end to the civilized world and the arrival of a new Dark Age - even though the country had suffered no occupation, no civil war and none of the bitter ideological rivalries of inter-war Europe, and had an economy that survived better than most. The Morbid Age explores how this strange paradox came about. Ultimately, Overy shows, the coming of war was almost welcomed as a way to resolve the contradictions and anxieties of this period, a war in which it was believed civilization would be either saved or utterly destroyed.

Narrating the Thirties

Narrating the Thirties PDF Author: J. Baxendale
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230373232
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
In a series of case-studies, ranging widely from documentary film and the writings of J.B. Priestley to postwar historiography and Remains of the Day, this book explores the ever-changing and hotly contested narratives of Britain in the 1930s. The authors argue that images of 'the Thirties' have been a continual presence in the construction of the wartime and postwar world, and in particular in the emergent discourse of social democracy and its subsequent decline.

Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain

Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain PDF Author: Dennis L. Dworkin
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822319146
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
A history of British cultural Marxism. This book traces its development from beginnings in postwar Britain, through transformations in the 1960s and 1970s, to the emergence of British cultural studies at Birmingham, up to the advent of Thatcherism, to reflect a tradition, that represents an effort to resolve the crisis of the postwar British Left.

A History of 1930s British Literature

A History of 1930s British Literature PDF Author: Benjamin Kohlmann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316998762
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This History offers a new and comprehensive picture of 1930s British literature. The '30s have often been cast as a literary-historical anomaly, either as a 'low, dishonest decade', a doomed experiment in combining art and politics, or as a 'late modernist' afterthought to the intense period of artistic experimentation in the 1920s. By contrast, the contributors to this volume explore the contours of a 'long 1930s' by repositioning the decade and its characteristic concerns at the heart of twentieth-century literary history. This book expands the range of writers covered, moving beyond a narrow focus on towering canonical figures to draw in a more diverse cast of characters, in terms of race, gender, class, and forms of artistic expression. The book's four sections emphasize the decade's characteristic geographical and sexual identities; the new media landscapes and institutional settings its writers operated in; questions of commitment and autonomy; and British writing's international entanglements.

Stress in Post-War Britain, 1945–85

Stress in Post-War Britain, 1945–85 PDF Author: Mark Jackson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317318048
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
In the years following World War II the health and well-being of the nation was of primary concern to the British government. The essays in this collection examine the relationship between health and stress in post-war Britain through a series of carefully connected case studies.

Popular culture and working–class taste in Britain, 1930–39

Popular culture and working–class taste in Britain, 1930–39 PDF Author: Robert James
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1847797555
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
This book examines the relationship between class and culture in 1930s Britain. Focusing on the reading and cinema-going tastes of the working classes, Robert James’ landmark study combines rigorous historical analysis with a close textual reading of visual and written sources to appraise the role of popular leisure in this fascinating decade. Drawing on a wealth of original research, this lively and accessible book adds immeasurably to our knowledge of working-class leisure pursuits in this contentious period. It is a key intervention in the field, providing both an imaginative approach to the subject and an abundance of new material to analyse, thus making it an undergraduate and postgraduate ‘must-have’. It will be a particularly welcome addition for anyone interested in the fields of cultural and social history, as well as film, cultural and literary studies.

George Orwell, Updated Edition

George Orwell, Updated Edition PDF Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1438113005
Category : Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Presents a collection of critical essays on the works of George Orwell.