'The underlying editorial argument is consistently evident through the book, offering the reader a satisfying sense of congruence and coherence across parts and chapters. The authors also do justice to the aim of the 'British Literature in Transition' series 'to understand literature's role in mediating the developments of the past hundred years … there is much to admire in the way contributors manage to weave together literary works and the social and political histories of the day.' Brian Elliott, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books
Introduction Charles Ferrall and Dougal McNeill; Part I. After the War: 1. Out of Mrs Colefax's Drawing-Room: poets and poetry between the wars Harry Ricketts; 2. Perverting the postwar: sexuality and state violence in women's literature Layne Parish Craig; 3. Journeys without maps: literature and spiritual experience Lara Vetter; Part II. Literature after Human Nature Changed: 4. Writing the vote: suffrage, gender, and politics Sowon S. Park and Kathryn Laing; 5. Literature and human rights Rachel Potter; 6. Psychoanalysis and modernism John Farrell; Part III. Immense Panoramas of Futility and Anarchy: Writing and Politics: 7. History: the past in transition Gabrielle McIntire; 8. Women's work? Domestic labour and proletarian fiction Charles Ferrall; 9. Ordinary places, intermodern genres: documentary, travel, and literature Kristin Bluemel; 10. Bloomsbury conversations that didn't happen: Indian writing between British modernism and anti-colonialism Snehal Shingavi and Charlotte Nunes; Part IV. The First Break-Up of Britain: 11. Between Holyhead and Kingstown: Anglo-Irish perspectives on the character of British fiction Michael G. Cronin; 12. Cancer of empire: the Glasgow novel between the wars Liam McIlvanney; 13. Lewis Jones and the making of Welsh Identity Shintaro Kono; 14. From Optik to Haptik: Celticism, symbols and stones in the 1930s Peter Mackay; Part V. Transitions High and Low: 15. On the home front: designs for living in British drama between the wars Penny Farfan; 16. Middlemen, middlebrow, broadbrow Nicola Wilson; 17. Detective fiction: resolutions without solutions J. C. Bernthal; 18. British literature in transmission: writing and wireless James Purdon.