Modernist Literature: An Introduction

An engaging critical assessment of British literature produced between 1900 and 1945.

The book concentrates on the first four decades of the twentieth century but acknowledges the nineteenth-century roots and later permutations of modernism. It focuses on Anglo-American literature while recognizing the global nature of modernism, with a notable interest in Irish writers. And it emphasizes the traditional generic categories of poetry and fiction at the same time as it incorporates discussions of documentary and visual media. Gillies and Mahood employ a unique structure: each of the four chapters of the book considers one decade in tandem with a particular literary genre and a selected theme of modernity. The first chapter considers the short story and the New Woman from 1900 to 1910; the second chapter looks at poetry and emerging technologies of modernity from 1910 to 1920, with particular emphasis on the war years; the third chapter discusses the twenties, the novel, and the slightly vague theme of ‘modern fashions’; and the final chapter turns to the thirties, non-fiction or documentary modernism, and ‘the politics of engagement.’ In each chapter, the writers aim to combine close readings of selected texts with an overview of the literary production of the decade. This is a delicate balancing act that works rather better some times than others, and the book sometimes risks becoming uneven when it moves between attempting to provide a definitive analysis of one particular work and very general summaries of everything else published in the period.