Kenneth Millard
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122258
- eISBN:
- 9780191671395
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122258.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
There has been considerable debate about the parameters of the Edwardian period since Richard Ellmann's essay ‘Two Faces of Edward’, which drew attention to this decade. The period takes its name ...
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There has been considerable debate about the parameters of the Edwardian period since Richard Ellmann's essay ‘Two Faces of Edward’, which drew attention to this decade. The period takes its name from its monarch Edward VII and strictly speaking is confined to 1901–10; but the word ‘Edwardian’ is commonly used to describe the period 1900–14. The purpose of this book is in part to define ‘Edwardian’ for the study of poetry and to discover if a characteristic style can be identified. The present study attempts to sharpen critical awareness of the Edwardian period and to establish what is unique about it. The following chapters offer a revision of literary history and a reassessment of some of the poetry of the early 20th century.Less
There has been considerable debate about the parameters of the Edwardian period since Richard Ellmann's essay ‘Two Faces of Edward’, which drew attention to this decade. The period takes its name from its monarch Edward VII and strictly speaking is confined to 1901–10; but the word ‘Edwardian’ is commonly used to describe the period 1900–14. The purpose of this book is in part to define ‘Edwardian’ for the study of poetry and to discover if a characteristic style can be identified. The present study attempts to sharpen critical awareness of the Edwardian period and to establish what is unique about it. The following chapters offer a revision of literary history and a reassessment of some of the poetry of the early 20th century.
Roderick Floud
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780192892102
- eISBN:
- 9780191670602
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780192892102.003.0013
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Economic History
This concluding chapter argues that the myth of the golden Victorian and Edwardian years can be misleading, even dangerously so, if it is allied to a denigration of the British economy and society in ...
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This concluding chapter argues that the myth of the golden Victorian and Edwardian years can be misleading, even dangerously so, if it is allied to a denigration of the British economy and society in the 20th century. It leads then to a search for scapegoats who can be blamed for the apparent fall from the high peaks of Britain's imperial glory. It is important to remember that, however substantial the achievements of the period from 1830 to 1914, Britain's economic growth in the 20th century has been faster and greater. At the same time, British society has become more civilized, more tolerant, and more equal than it was at any time in the Victorian or Edwardian age.Less
This concluding chapter argues that the myth of the golden Victorian and Edwardian years can be misleading, even dangerously so, if it is allied to a denigration of the British economy and society in the 20th century. It leads then to a search for scapegoats who can be blamed for the apparent fall from the high peaks of Britain's imperial glory. It is important to remember that, however substantial the achievements of the period from 1830 to 1914, Britain's economic growth in the 20th century has been faster and greater. At the same time, British society has become more civilized, more tolerant, and more equal than it was at any time in the Victorian or Edwardian age.
P. J. Cain
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198203902
- eISBN:
- 9780191719141
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198203902.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter shows that, in the Edwardian period, Hobson's thinking on imperial matters was, at worst, schizoid and, at best, puzzling. One strand of his writings was in a direct line of succession ...
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This chapter shows that, in the Edwardian period, Hobson's thinking on imperial matters was, at worst, schizoid and, at best, puzzling. One strand of his writings was in a direct line of succession from Imperialism: A Study. He also printed numerous articles in which he warned of the dangers of parasitism and its consequences. This was accompanied by a stream of writings contradicting some key arguments in Imperialism: A Study. His advocacy of free trade led him into dangerous intellectual territory. In An Economic Interpretation of Investment, Hobson presented imperialism not as a reversion to militancy and barbarism so much as a necessary stage in an economic globalisation that would eventually lead every area of the world, whether advanced or backward, towards liberty and prosperity.Less
This chapter shows that, in the Edwardian period, Hobson's thinking on imperial matters was, at worst, schizoid and, at best, puzzling. One strand of his writings was in a direct line of succession from Imperialism: A Study. He also printed numerous articles in which he warned of the dangers of parasitism and its consequences. This was accompanied by a stream of writings contradicting some key arguments in Imperialism: A Study. His advocacy of free trade led him into dangerous intellectual territory. In An Economic Interpretation of Investment, Hobson presented imperialism not as a reversion to militancy and barbarism so much as a necessary stage in an economic globalisation that would eventually lead every area of the world, whether advanced or backward, towards liberty and prosperity.
Randall Stevenson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474401555
- eISBN:
- 9781474444880
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474401555.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
1920s trends discussed in Chapter 3 continue to figure in the next decade, in which the work of J.W Dunne – loosely connected with the popularity of relativity, and proposing a visionary, ...
More
1920s trends discussed in Chapter 3 continue to figure in the next decade, in which the work of J.W Dunne – loosely connected with the popularity of relativity, and proposing a visionary, pre-cognitive understanding of time – exercised an influence over several contemporary authors. Generally, though, 1930s writing moved away from resistance to the minutely-measured temporalities of the clock and towards broader, often nostalgic encounters of memory with history, with some of Virginia Woolf’s later fiction indicating the nature of the change. The long analepsis in Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier provides a paradigm for many nostalgic revisitings, in 1930s fiction, of the supposedly-idyllic Edwardian period – in novels by Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, George Orwell and others. Similar patterns of analepsis and idyllic recollection can be found in writing published during and after the Second World War, by authors including Evelyn Waugh, Joyce Cary, Rosamond Lehmann, L.P Hartley and others. Though still occasionally discernible in fiction later in the century, the pattern fades during the following decades, whose difficulties in recalling affirmatively any period within living memory may have constituted a problem for narrative fiction generally.Less
1920s trends discussed in Chapter 3 continue to figure in the next decade, in which the work of J.W Dunne – loosely connected with the popularity of relativity, and proposing a visionary, pre-cognitive understanding of time – exercised an influence over several contemporary authors. Generally, though, 1930s writing moved away from resistance to the minutely-measured temporalities of the clock and towards broader, often nostalgic encounters of memory with history, with some of Virginia Woolf’s later fiction indicating the nature of the change. The long analepsis in Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier provides a paradigm for many nostalgic revisitings, in 1930s fiction, of the supposedly-idyllic Edwardian period – in novels by Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, George Orwell and others. Similar patterns of analepsis and idyllic recollection can be found in writing published during and after the Second World War, by authors including Evelyn Waugh, Joyce Cary, Rosamond Lehmann, L.P Hartley and others. Though still occasionally discernible in fiction later in the century, the pattern fades during the following decades, whose difficulties in recalling affirmatively any period within living memory may have constituted a problem for narrative fiction generally.
MARC BRODIE
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199270552
- eISBN:
- 9780191710254
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199270552.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Social History
This chapter presents some concluding thoughts from the author. It argues that the image of a populist Conservatism and a political apathy growing in the late Victorian and Edwardian period out of an ...
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This chapter presents some concluding thoughts from the author. It argues that the image of a populist Conservatism and a political apathy growing in the late Victorian and Edwardian period out of an abjectly poor East End is wrong. The examination of ‘models’ put forward by historians to support this idea has suggested that few were built upon a solid base of evidence, and that they often relied heavily upon superficial and unjustified assumptions regarding poverty, race, and religion. The politics of the East End working class were far more complex than these models allow.Less
This chapter presents some concluding thoughts from the author. It argues that the image of a populist Conservatism and a political apathy growing in the late Victorian and Edwardian period out of an abjectly poor East End is wrong. The examination of ‘models’ put forward by historians to support this idea has suggested that few were built upon a solid base of evidence, and that they often relied heavily upon superficial and unjustified assumptions regarding poverty, race, and religion. The politics of the East End working class were far more complex than these models allow.
Kate Flint
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198121855
- eISBN:
- 9780191671357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198121855.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Reading, in the Victorian and Edwardian period, as now, was an activity through which women could become aware of the simultaneity of the ...
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Reading, in the Victorian and Edwardian period, as now, was an activity through which women could become aware of the simultaneity of the sensations of difference and of similarity. Reading provided the means not only, on occasion, for the Victorian woman to abnegate the self; to withdraw into the passivity induced by the opiate of fiction. Far more excitingly, it allowed her to assert her sense of selfhood, and to know that she was not alone in doing so. The variety of evidence put forward in this book demonstrates that despite the recurrence of certain stereotypes throughout the period, and the way in which these stereotypes functioned to determine attitudes about reading in the home, in education, and in the provision of public library facilities which would serve a growing number of readers, individuals frequently read across the grain of such expectations.Less
Reading, in the Victorian and Edwardian period, as now, was an activity through which women could become aware of the simultaneity of the sensations of difference and of similarity. Reading provided the means not only, on occasion, for the Victorian woman to abnegate the self; to withdraw into the passivity induced by the opiate of fiction. Far more excitingly, it allowed her to assert her sense of selfhood, and to know that she was not alone in doing so. The variety of evidence put forward in this book demonstrates that despite the recurrence of certain stereotypes throughout the period, and the way in which these stereotypes functioned to determine attitudes about reading in the home, in education, and in the provision of public library facilities which would serve a growing number of readers, individuals frequently read across the grain of such expectations.
Kate Flint
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198121855
- eISBN:
- 9780191671357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198121855.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This introductory chapter begins with five images which depict women readers absorbed in texts, apparently oblivious to artist and observer. ...
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This introductory chapter begins with five images which depict women readers absorbed in texts, apparently oblivious to artist and observer. One of the paintings, Ralph Hedley’s Seeking Situations (1904), serves to alert one to the proximity of textuality and sexuality in discourses of reading throughout the Victorian and early Edwardian period. This book offers suggestions as to why ‘the woman reader’ was an issue addressed with such frequency throughout the period. It treats reading both as a leisure activity and as an essential component of more formal education, whether this education was home based or, increasingly, obtained at school. The study of literature, in particular, became an area for discussion as girls’ education widened in availability and seriousness in the second half of the nineteenth century. The book presents a variety of accounts of reading, providing evidence of the wide-ranging practices of particular girls and women throughout the period; their opportunities for obtaining books and the differing degrees of supervision exercised over their consumption of print.Less
This introductory chapter begins with five images which depict women readers absorbed in texts, apparently oblivious to artist and observer. One of the paintings, Ralph Hedley’s Seeking Situations (1904), serves to alert one to the proximity of textuality and sexuality in discourses of reading throughout the Victorian and early Edwardian period. This book offers suggestions as to why ‘the woman reader’ was an issue addressed with such frequency throughout the period. It treats reading both as a leisure activity and as an essential component of more formal education, whether this education was home based or, increasingly, obtained at school. The study of literature, in particular, became an area for discussion as girls’ education widened in availability and seriousness in the second half of the nineteenth century. The book presents a variety of accounts of reading, providing evidence of the wide-ranging practices of particular girls and women throughout the period; their opportunities for obtaining books and the differing degrees of supervision exercised over their consumption of print.
Kate Flint
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198121855
- eISBN:
- 9780191671357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198121855.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The issue of reading and its effects during the Victorian and early Edwardian period did not concern women alone. It centred around the widely ...
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The issue of reading and its effects during the Victorian and early Edwardian period did not concern women alone. It centred around the widely held belief in the affective powers of what was read. On the one hand, the beneficial potential of reading was celebrated: ‘a good book is ‘the precious life-blood of a master-spirit’, and possesses a wonderful potency of encouragement and inspiration’. On the other, it was feared that ‘desultory reading is very mischievous’. By the mid-century, certain reviewers and essayists were speculating about the general dangers specifically attendant on the rapid proliferation of print. Excessive indiscriminate reading was condemned as morally debilitating. Many Victorians wrote of reading as something that affects mental health. Others viewed reading of fiction as a form of escapism.Less
The issue of reading and its effects during the Victorian and early Edwardian period did not concern women alone. It centred around the widely held belief in the affective powers of what was read. On the one hand, the beneficial potential of reading was celebrated: ‘a good book is ‘the precious life-blood of a master-spirit’, and possesses a wonderful potency of encouragement and inspiration’. On the other, it was feared that ‘desultory reading is very mischievous’. By the mid-century, certain reviewers and essayists were speculating about the general dangers specifically attendant on the rapid proliferation of print. Excessive indiscriminate reading was condemned as morally debilitating. Many Victorians wrote of reading as something that affects mental health. Others viewed reading of fiction as a form of escapism.
Jonathan Wild
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748635061
- eISBN:
- 9781474419536
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635061.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This book challenges conventional views of the Edwardian period as either a hangover of Victorianism or a bystander to literary modernism. The text investigates the literary history of the Edwardian ...
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This book challenges conventional views of the Edwardian period as either a hangover of Victorianism or a bystander to literary modernism. The text investigates the literary history of the Edwardian decade. This period, long overlooked by critics, is revealed as a vibrant cultural era whose writers were determined to break away from the stifling influence of preceding Victorianism. In the hands of this generation, which included writers such as Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, Beatrix Potter, and H. G. Wells, the new century presented a unique opportunity to fashion innovative books for fresh audiences. Wild traces this literary innovation by conceptualising the focal points of his study as branches of one of the new department stores that epitomized Edwardian modernity. These ‘departments’ — war and imperialism, the rise of the lower middle class, children's literature, technology and decadence, and the condition of England — offer both discrete and interconnected ways in which to understand the distinctiveness and importance of the Edwardian literary scene. Overall, this book offers a long-overdue investigation into a decade of literature that provided the cultural foundation for the coming century.Less
This book challenges conventional views of the Edwardian period as either a hangover of Victorianism or a bystander to literary modernism. The text investigates the literary history of the Edwardian decade. This period, long overlooked by critics, is revealed as a vibrant cultural era whose writers were determined to break away from the stifling influence of preceding Victorianism. In the hands of this generation, which included writers such as Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, Beatrix Potter, and H. G. Wells, the new century presented a unique opportunity to fashion innovative books for fresh audiences. Wild traces this literary innovation by conceptualising the focal points of his study as branches of one of the new department stores that epitomized Edwardian modernity. These ‘departments’ — war and imperialism, the rise of the lower middle class, children's literature, technology and decadence, and the condition of England — offer both discrete and interconnected ways in which to understand the distinctiveness and importance of the Edwardian literary scene. Overall, this book offers a long-overdue investigation into a decade of literature that provided the cultural foundation for the coming century.
Kate Flint
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198121855
- eISBN:
- 9780191671357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198121855.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Throughout the Victorian and early Edwardian period, theories about how women’s modes of reading differed from those of men, and why they ...
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Throughout the Victorian and early Edwardian period, theories about how women’s modes of reading differed from those of men, and why they should be affected so strongly by what they read, were inseparably linked to those developments in physiology and psychology which found, demonstrated, and utilized evidence for the intimate interrelations of mind and body. Women’s experience of their bodies in social relations is inevitably different from that of men, and women’s bodies unarguably are distinct from men’s in terms of their separate reproductive systems. More controversially, however, biological difference was asserted to lie behind unalterable gender differences in the physical constitution of the brain, and hence in its operation. With the near-universal acceptance of the inescapable relation of brain and body, it is unsurprising that focusing on the physiological difference between women and men formed the basis for a number of apparently authoritative theories concerning women and reading.Less
Throughout the Victorian and early Edwardian period, theories about how women’s modes of reading differed from those of men, and why they should be affected so strongly by what they read, were inseparably linked to those developments in physiology and psychology which found, demonstrated, and utilized evidence for the intimate interrelations of mind and body. Women’s experience of their bodies in social relations is inevitably different from that of men, and women’s bodies unarguably are distinct from men’s in terms of their separate reproductive systems. More controversially, however, biological difference was asserted to lie behind unalterable gender differences in the physical constitution of the brain, and hence in its operation. With the near-universal acceptance of the inescapable relation of brain and body, it is unsurprising that focusing on the physiological difference between women and men formed the basis for a number of apparently authoritative theories concerning women and reading.
Anna Vaninskaya
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748641499
- eISBN:
- 9780748651672
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748641499.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter introduces the socialist hybrids, which were formed by the socialist movement and its propaganda. It discusses hybrid utopia and the fin de siècle socialist movement. It notes that ...
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This chapter introduces the socialist hybrids, which were formed by the socialist movement and its propaganda. It discusses hybrid utopia and the fin de siècle socialist movement. It notes that ideological heterogeneity was not limited to social and political practice, and that it could be observed in two different socialist novels of the Edwardian period. The chapter also considers the transformation of an antithesis from synchronic to diachronic and the ‘disintegration of communalism’ myth.Less
This chapter introduces the socialist hybrids, which were formed by the socialist movement and its propaganda. It discusses hybrid utopia and the fin de siècle socialist movement. It notes that ideological heterogeneity was not limited to social and political practice, and that it could be observed in two different socialist novels of the Edwardian period. The chapter also considers the transformation of an antithesis from synchronic to diachronic and the ‘disintegration of communalism’ myth.
Siobhan Lambert-Hurley and Sunil Sharma
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- October 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198068334
- eISBN:
- 9780199080441
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198068334.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Indian History
Atiya Fyzee’s travelogue provides a glimpse not only of grand public gatherings and prestigious social engagements, but also of the so-called everyday: a world that is routine and even mundane. A ...
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Atiya Fyzee’s travelogue provides a glimpse not only of grand public gatherings and prestigious social engagements, but also of the so-called everyday: a world that is routine and even mundane. A form of informal ethnography, Atiya’s travelogue contains accounts of food and cooking in Britain during the Edwardian period, along with gardening, the weather, religion, leisure, and travel. Atiya also wrote about the day-to-day realities of friendships, college life, and what it meant in practical terms to study at a women’s teacher training college of the period. She was particularly impressed by the English servants when compared to those back in her native India.Less
Atiya Fyzee’s travelogue provides a glimpse not only of grand public gatherings and prestigious social engagements, but also of the so-called everyday: a world that is routine and even mundane. A form of informal ethnography, Atiya’s travelogue contains accounts of food and cooking in Britain during the Edwardian period, along with gardening, the weather, religion, leisure, and travel. Atiya also wrote about the day-to-day realities of friendships, college life, and what it meant in practical terms to study at a women’s teacher training college of the period. She was particularly impressed by the English servants when compared to those back in her native India.
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846312328
- eISBN:
- 9781846316111
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846312328.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter examines sophistication in the Victorian and Edwardian periods as represented in literary texts. It analyses child's relationship to innocence and sophistication and describes ...
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This chapter examines sophistication in the Victorian and Edwardian periods as represented in literary texts. It analyses child's relationship to innocence and sophistication and describes sophisticated figures of the era. It also considers the issues of dandyism, aestheticism, and cosmopolitanism. This chapter also provides a close reading of several relevant works including Henry James' Daisy Miller, Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Daisy Ashford's The Young Visiters.Less
This chapter examines sophistication in the Victorian and Edwardian periods as represented in literary texts. It analyses child's relationship to innocence and sophistication and describes sophisticated figures of the era. It also considers the issues of dandyism, aestheticism, and cosmopolitanism. This chapter also provides a close reading of several relevant works including Henry James' Daisy Miller, Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Daisy Ashford's The Young Visiters.
Tom Scott-Smith
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501748653
- eISBN:
- 9781501748677
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501748653.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter shows how modern nutritional science was put to the service of government and used to shape human conduct in institutions such as workhouses, schools, and industrial canteens. In this ...
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This chapter shows how modern nutritional science was put to the service of government and used to shape human conduct in institutions such as workhouses, schools, and industrial canteens. In this period the calorie became a widely used unit of energy, and the human body was conceived as a working machine. The chapter tracks the rise of the “labor science” of the 1880s, and an extension of dietary measurement to national productivity in general. From there, new concerns with energy and efficiency then seeped into older models of relief, illustrated through a generation of soup kitchens that updated Rumford's legacy. The high point of this movement came in the Edwardian period, when a colonial crisis attributed military failure to the meals of the British working class.Less
This chapter shows how modern nutritional science was put to the service of government and used to shape human conduct in institutions such as workhouses, schools, and industrial canteens. In this period the calorie became a widely used unit of energy, and the human body was conceived as a working machine. The chapter tracks the rise of the “labor science” of the 1880s, and an extension of dietary measurement to national productivity in general. From there, new concerns with energy and efficiency then seeped into older models of relief, illustrated through a generation of soup kitchens that updated Rumford's legacy. The high point of this movement came in the Edwardian period, when a colonial crisis attributed military failure to the meals of the British working class.
