Transitions in Middlebrow Writing, 1880 - 1930

This book examines the connections evident between the simultaneous emergence of British modernism and middlebrow literary culture from 1880 to the 1930s. The essays illustrate the mutual influences of modernist and middlebrow authors, critics, publishers and magazines.

1. Introduction: Transitions and cultural formations; Kate Macdonald, Ghent University, and Christoph Singer 2. What people really read in 1922: If Winter Comes, the bestseller in the annus mirabilis of modernism; Kirsten MacLeod 3. Public gains and literary goods: a coeval tale of Conrad, Kipling and Francis Marion Crawford; Simon Frost 4. 'To-day has never been 'highbrow'': middlebrow, modernism, and the many faces of To-day; Louise Kane 5. Domesticating modern art: Charles Marriott (1869-1957) and the art of middlebrow criticism; Rebecca Sitch 6. 'Sentiment wasn't dead': anti-modernism in John Galsworthy's The White Monkey; Alison Hurlburt 7. HG Wells'The Sea Lady and the siren call of the middlebrow; Emma Miller 8. Scottish modernism, Kailyard, and the woman at home; Samantha Walton 9. 'The most thrilling and fascinating book of the century': marketing Gustave Flaubert in late nineteenth-century Britain; Juliette Atkinson 10. Cross-channel mediations: Henry-D. Davray and British popular fiction in the Mercure de France; Birgit Van Puymbroeck 11. Middlebrow criticism across national borders: Arnold Bennett and Herman Robbers on literary taste in Britain and the Netherlands; Koen Rymenants 12. Who framed Edgar Wallace? British popular fiction and middlebrow criticism in the Netherlands'; Mathijs Sanders and Alex Rutten Bibliography Index