Fiction of the New Statesman, 1913-1939

By (author) Bashir Abu-Manneh

Publication date:

10 October 2011

Length of book:

292 pages

Publisher

University of Delaware Press

Dimensions:

240x162mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781611493528

Fiction of the New Statesman is the first study of the short stories published in the renowned British journal theNew Statesman. This book argues that New Statesman fiction advances a strong realist preoccupation with ordinary, everyday life, and shows how British domestic concerns have a strong hold on the working-class and lower-middle-class imaginative output of this period.

Chapter 1 Acknowledgments
Chapter 2 Introduction: Realism and Class
Chapter 3 Realism
Chapter 4 Interwar Class
Part 5 Origins and Foundational Patterns 1913-14
Chapter 6 Arnold Bennett and the General Strike
Chapter 7 Smells, Threats, Rumblings, Accidents, and Suppressions
Chapter 8 R. M. Fox and Working-Class Literature
Part 9 Ruralism Realized: H. E. Bates
Chapter 10 Late 20s: Oppression and Desire
Chapter 11 30s Bloom
Part 12 Colonial Anxieties and Hopes: From E. R. Morrough to Winifred Holtby
Chapter 13 Morrough's Egypt
Chapter 14 Leslie Mitchell and E. M. Forster on Egyptian
Chapter 15 William Plomer and Holtby
Part 16 Rise of Modernist Women
Chapter 17 Late 20s: Travel and Oppression
Chapter 18 The 30s and Stella Benson
Part 19 Soviet Fictions of the 30s: Bolshevism and Michael Zoshchenko
Chapter 20 Against Anti-Bolshevism: Understanding Stalin's Russ
Chapter 21 Michael Zoshchenko's Early Soviet Episodes
Chapter 22 Elisaveta Fen's Late 30s Zoshchenko
Chapter 23 Self-Criticism or Lies?
Part 24 Realism or Documentary in the 30s: V.S. Pritchett and Peter Chamberlain
25 Pritchett, Foreigner Englishman
Chapter 26 Chamberlain's Snapshot Documentary
Chapter 27 Conclusion: Realist Relations
Chapter 28 Bibliography

The reinstatement of realism at the heart of inter-war fiction is long overdue but is now taking place, partly because literary scholars have been reading some history, partly because historians have been thinking about culture. This readable and argumentative book makes a significant contribution to the process, showing us how important realism was to the literary left, linking as it did the political and literary halves of the New Statesman. That it also introduces us to some worthwhile and neglected writing is a welcome bonus.