British Literature in Transition, 1900–1920: A New Age?

This book shows how early twentieth-century British literature responded to the uncertainties of a rapidly changing world.

British literature between 1900 and 1920 has usually been conceived in terms of the unstoppable rise of modernism and the social and cultural upheavals caused by the First World War. Telling a wider story, this volume illuminates the diversity of British literary culture in the century's first two decades.During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Britain's imperial power and influence was at its height. These were years of daring, when adventurers sounded the mysteries of the deep sea and the distant poles, aviators sped through the skies, and new media technologies transformed communication. They were years of social upheaval, during which long-suppressed voices – particularly those of women, of the labouring classes, and of colonial subjects – grew louder and demanded to be heard. They were years of violence, of insurrection and political agitation, and of imperial conflicts that would encompass continents. By subjecting specific developments in literature and related culture to a fine-grained and historically-informed analysis, British Literature in Transition, 1900–1920: A New Age? explores the writing of this extraordinary period in all its complexity and vibrancy.