Mobility and the Hotel in Modern Literature

This book considers the complex ways in which the hotel functions to express the shifting experiences of modernity in the works of such authors as Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, Arnold Bennett, H. G. Wells, and Elizabeth Bowen. The text contributes to the critical debates on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature concerning space, movement, and mobility, arguing that the hotel reconfigures boundaries of modernist, middlebrow, and popular fiction. Drawing on a range of interdisciplinary theoretical and analytical perspectives, the book provides a critical and cultural history of the hotel in British literature, charting its changing nature and usage from the mid-nineteenth century up until the interwar period.

Chapter One. Introduction: Modern Mobilities in the Hotel. - Chapter Two. Along the Corridor: Charting the Hotel Narrative. - Chapter Three. Anticipation and Stagnation in the Lobby. - Chapter Four. `The Intolerable Impudence of the Public Gaze : The Public Rooms of the Hotel. - Chapter Five. Space, Movement, and Inhabitation: Transgression in the Hotel Bedroom. - Chapter Six. `The Bowels of the Hotel : The Laundry, Kitchen, and Back Areas. - Chapter Seven. Afterword.