British Literature and the Life of Institutions

An important contribution to the literary and intellectual history of Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as to contemporary debates on critique and post-critique. Focusing on a constellation of thinkers and writers who gave voice to a reformist imaginary, Kohlmann helps us to think about reform and the state anew. A powerful defense of the slow politics of progressive reform informed by aspirations to live otherwise. * Amanda Anderson, Director, Cogut Institute for the Humanities and Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and English, Brown University *
British Literature and the Life of Institutions is a serious achievement: a genuinely important contribution not only to Victorian and modernist literary studies, but to the wider conversation about literature and critique today. By bringing back into play a much more positive conception of the state's role in our lives than has dominated cultural criticism in recent decades, Kohlmann gives depth and analytic edge to accounts of political reformism, restoring a vocabulary for 'long revolutionary' commitments to a more egalitarian society. Victorian and Edwardian literature look different in the light of his readings; so too does the long arc of argument over the nature and scope of criticism's commitments through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. * Helen Small, Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Oxford *
An irreplaceable contribution to our understanding of literature and philosophy around 1900--and a model for contemporary scholarship. Meticulously, and with exceptional clarity of view, Kohlmann counters threadbare conceptions of the state as necessarily inflexible, monolithic, and at odds with social life. * Douglas Mao, Russ Family Professor in the Humanities, Johns Hopkins University *
A deeply researched, tightly argued, and immensely valuable study. It stands among the strongest contributions to the growing new institutionalism in literary studies...A fascinating treatment of its subject...Makes a case for the importance of thinking institutions differently in the present: this is as much a work of intellectual history and reclamation as of literary scholarship. * Robert Higney, The City College Of New York *
I can highly recommend British Literature and the Life of Institutions to scholars interested in debates about social reform past and present. * Journal for the Study of British Cultures 30.1 *
a set of awesomely researched case studies … dazzling in its command of detail. Other approaches are certainly possible and are strongly exemplified by the work of Fredric Jameson and Raymond Williams. But Kohlmann deserves to be recognized as an original thinker in his own right [...] His book makes a distinctive contribution to the study of social thought in the decades before World War I, and it deserves a lasting readership among scholars wanting to immerse themselves in its materials. * Marshall Brown, University of Washington , Arcadia 59.1 *
explaining the differences between reform and revolution, Kohlmann sets the stage for an intriguing look into 'Thinking the State (Again)'.... Kohlmann's book is an excellent delve into the economics of around 1900 ... an absolute treat. * The Wellsian *
There is much to admire about Benjamin Kohlmann's British Literature and the Life of Institutions. ... It provides innovative readings that offer an expansive view of a sustained reformist literary mode cohering around the belief that institutions are part of rather than external to lived social life ... The book provocatively reevaluates a neglected series of debates and a moment within literary history ... Far from being a body of literature that does not speak directly to our present moment, with concerns that need not overly concern us, British Literature and the Life of Institutions gives the lie to that commonplace perception. * Carolyn Lesjak, Nineteenth-Century Literature 79.2 *