Origins of English Literary Modernism, 1870 - 1914

The aim of this work is to focus on the non-dramatic works of the early period of modernism in England with an emphasis on the origins and development of key writers and poets. Other such studies date to the mid1980s (Michael Levenson, Sanford Schwartz, Stan Smith, e.g.) and tend to lean heavily toward intellectual history or poetics. This work strives to include a broad mix of thought as to the issue and the purpose of modernism including cultural anthropology, mythology, impressionism and the use of architectural space, with some attention to publishing (the development of the English short story, emergence of literary magazines, and use of literary reviews in creating a "public' for new writing) . Also, as opposed the edited collections such as Shiach or Whitworth research is not confined to a single genre nor strays from the focus of literary as opposed to other modern movements then in creation. Vital currents of modernism such as literary feminism, secular humanism/Darwinism and place and placelessness are also discussed. The writers and poets discussed include Pound, Eliot, Wyndam Lewis, T.E.Hulme, Hardy, F.M.Ford, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, Walter Pater, "Michael Field", Henry.James, Oscar Wilde and E.M.Forster. Contributors include Tyrus Miller, University of California, Santa Cruz, Elizabeth Foley O'Connor, Fordham University, Jason B. Jones, Central Connecticut State University Charles Sumner, University of Southern Mississippi Carme Font Paz, Universitat Aut noma de Barcelona Lori M. Campbell, University of Pittsburgh Elizabeth A. Primamore, Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY Robert McParland, Felician College Sheng-yen Yu, National Taipei University of Technology Gregory F. Tague, St. Francis College Alex Moffett, Northeastern University Mitchell R. Lewis, Elmira College Divya Saksena, Middle Tennessee State University Yevgeniya Traps, Graduate Center, CUNY Daniel Moore, University of Birmingham, UK Allan Johnson, University of Leeds, UK Wayne Stables, Trinity College, Dublin Timothy Vincent, Duquesne University Monika Gehlawat, University of Southern Mississippi Tom Henthorne, Pace University Katherine Isobel Baxter, Hong Kong University "This substantial volume organized around thematics of Origins of English Literary Modernism allows essays on the fin de si cle to talk interestingly to those on Edwardians and Georgians and they in turn to studies of early modernist masters. The emphasis on genealogy of modernism holds the volume together but does not keep individual essays from fresh and interesting explorations, little magazines in the fin de si cle, Bennett's early criticism, historiography in Vernon Lee, Baedeker in E. M. Forster: a rich and interesting collection toward study of the long twentieth century." John Maynard, Professor of English, New York University, and Co-Editor of Victorian Literature and Culture.