The 1930s: A Decade of Modern British Fiction

321 Pages·2021·2.491 MB·English

by  Luke Seaber (editor), Elinor Taylor (editor)

Th e 1930s
A Decade of Modern British Fiction
i
Titles in Th e Decades Series
Th e 1930s: A Decade of Modern British Fiction, edited by Nick Hubble,
Luke Seaber and Elinor Taylor
Th e 1950s: A Decade of Modern British Fiction, edited by Nick Bentley,
Alice Ferrebe and Nick Hubble
Th e 1960s: A Decade of Modern British Fiction, edited by Philip Tew,
James Riley and Melanie Seddon
Th e 1970s: A Decade of Contemporary British Fiction, edited by Nick Hubble,
John McLeod and Philip Tew
Th e 1980s: A Decade of Contemporary British Fiction, edited by Emily Horton,
Philip Tew, and Leigh Wilson
Th e 1990s: A Decade of Contemporary British Fiction, edited by Nick Hubble,
Philip Tew and Leigh Wilson
Th e 2000s: A Decade of Contemporary British Fiction, edited by Nick Bentley,
Nick Hubble and Leigh Wilson
In preparation:
Th e 1940s: A Decade of Modern British Fiction, edited by Philip Tew
and Glyn White
ii
Th e 1930s
A Decade of Modern British Fiction
Edited by
Nick Hubble, Luke Seaber and Elinor Taylor
iii
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2021

Copyright © Nick Hubble, Luke Seaber, Elinor Taylor and contributors, 2021

Nick Hubble, Luke Seaber, Elinor Taylor and Contributors have asserted their right under
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as Authors of this work.

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xii constitute an extension of this copyright page.

Cover design: Eleanor Rose

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hubble, Nick, 1965- editor. | Seaber, Luke, 1979- editor. |
Taylor, Elinor (Postdoctoral teacher), editor.
Title: The 1930s : a decade of modern British fi ction / edited by Nick Hubble,
Luke Seaber and Elinor Taylor.
Other titles: Nineteen thirties
Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. | Series: The decades series | Includes
bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “With austerity biting hard and fascism on the march
at home and abroad, the Britain of the 1930s grappled with many problems familiar to us today. Moving
beyond the traditional focus on ‘the Auden generation’, this book surveys the literature of the period in
all its diversity, from working class, women, queer and postcolonial writers to popular crime and thriller
novels. In this way, the book explores the uneven processes of modernization and cultural
democratization that characterized the decade. A major critical re-evaluation of the decade, the book
covers such writers as Eric Ambler, Mulk Raj Anand, Katharine Burdekin, Agatha Christie, Lewis Grassic
Gibbon, Christopher Isherwood, Storm Jameson, Ethel Mannin, Naomi Mitchison, George Orwell,
Christina Stead, Evelyn Waugh and many others”– Provided by publisher.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2020040936 (print) | LCCN 2020040937 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350079144 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781350079151 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781350079168 (eBook)
Subjects: LCSH: English fi ction–20th century–History and criticism. | England–Civilization–20th century.
Classifi cation: LCC PR881 .A127 2018 (print) | LCC PR881 (ebook) | DDC 823/.91209—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020040936
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020040937.

ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-7914-4
ePDF: 978-1-3500-7915-1
eBook: 978-1-3500-7916-8

Series: The Decades Series

Typeset by Refi neCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

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iv
Contents
Series Editors’ Preface vi
List of Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction: Th e 1930s in the Twenty-First Century
Nick Hubble, Luke Seaber and Elinor Taylor 1
1 ‘You’re Not in the Market at Shielding, Joe’: Beyond the Myth
of the ‘Th irties’ N ick Hubble 17
2 Spectres of English Fascism: History, Aesthetics and Cultural
Critique E linor Taylor 59
3 Naomi Mitchison, Eugenics and the Community: Th e Class
and Gender Politics of Intelligence N atasha Periyan 91
4 British Culture and Identity in 1930s Anglophone Literature from
Australia, Canada and India S abujkoli Bandopadhyay 123
5 Timely Interventions: Queer Writing of the 1930s G lyn Salton-Cox 155
6 Private Faces in Public Places: Auto-Intertextuality, Authority
and 1930s Fiction L uke Seaber 183
7 ‘How To Acquire Culture’ by Th e Man Who Sees: Th e Middlebrow,
Liberal Humanism, and Morally Superior Lower-Middle-Class
Citizenship in Woman’s Weekly , 1938–1939 Eleanor Reed 207
8 ‘It’s a Narsty Biziness’: Conservatism and Subversion in 1930s
Detective Fiction and Th rillers Glyn White 239
Timeline of Works 273
Timeline of National Events 279
Timeline of International Events 281
Biographies of Writers 283
Index 299
v
Series Editors’ Preface
Nick Hubble, Philip Tew and Leigh Wilson
Th e series began with a focus on Contemporary British fi ction published from
1970 to the present, an expanding area of academic interest, becoming a major
area of academic study in the last twenty-fi ve years and attracting a seemingly
ever-increasing global scholarship. However, that very speed of the growth of
research in this fi eld has perhaps precluded any really nuanced analysis of its key
defi ning terms and has restricted consideration of its chronological development.
Th is series addresses such issues in an informative and structured manner
through a set of extended contributions combining wide-reaching survey work
with in-depth research-led analysis. Naturally, many older British academics
assume at least some personal knowledge in charting this fi eld, drawing on their
own life experience, but increasingly many such coordinates represent the distant
past of pre-birth or childhood not only for students, both undergraduate and
postgraduate, but also younger academics. Given that most people’s memories of
their fi rst fi ve to ten years are vague and localized, an academic born in the early
to mid-1980s will only have real fi rst-hand knowledge of less than half these
forty-plus years, while a member of the current generation of new undergraduates,
born in the very late-1990s, will have no adult experience of the period at all. Th e
apparently self-evident nature of this chronological, experiential reality disguises
the rather complex challenges it poses to any assessment of the contemporary (or
of the past in terms of precursory periods). Th erefore, the aim of these volumes,
which include timelines and biographical information on the writers covered, is
to provide the contextual framework that is now necessary for the study of the
British fi ction of these four decades and beyond.
Each of the volumes in this Decades Series emerged from a series of workshops
hosted by the Brunel Centre for Contemporary Writing (BCCW) located in the
now vanished School of Arts at Brunel University London, UK. Th ese events
assembled specially invited teams of leading internationally recognized scholars
in the fi eld, together with emergent younger fi gures, in order that they might
together examine critically the periodization of initially contemporary British
fi ction (which overall chronology was later expanded by adding previous decades)
vi
Series Editors’ Preface vii
by dividing it into its four constituent decades: the 1970s symposium was held on
12 March 2010; the 1980s on 7 July 2010; the 1990s on 3 December 2010; and the
2000s on 1 April 2011. Subsequent seminars expanding the series included the
1960s on 18 March 2015; the 1950s on 22 April 2015; the 1930s on 21 June 2017;
and the 1940s on 6 June 2018. During workshops, draft papers were off ered and
discussions ensued, exchanging ideas and ensuring both continuity and also
fruitful interaction (including productive dissonances) between what would
become chapters of volumes that would hopefully exceed the sum of their parts.
Th e division of the series by decade could be charged with being too obvious
and therefore rather too contentious. In the latter camp, no doubt, would be
Ferdinand Mount, who in a 2006 article for the L ondon Review of Books concerned
primarily with the 1950s, ‘Th e Doctrine of Unripe Time’, complained ‘When did
decaditis fi rst strike? When did people begin to think that slicing the past up into
periods of ten years was a useful thing to do?’ However, he does admit still that
such characterization has long been associated with aesthetic production and its
relationship to a larger sense of the times. In Th e Sense of an Ending: Studies in the
Th eory of Fiction , published in 1967, Frank Kermode argued that divisions of
time, like novels, are ways of making meaning. And clearly both can also shape
our comprehension of an ideological and aesthetic period that seem to co-exist,
but are perhaps not necessarily coterminous in their dominant infl ections. Th e
scholars involved in our BCCW symposia discussed the potential arbitrariness
of all periodizations (which at times is refl ected by contributors by extending
the parameters of the decade under scrutiny), but nevertheless acknowledged
the importance of such divisions, their experiential resonances and symbolic
possibilities. Th ey analysed the decades in question in terms of not only leading
fi gures, the cultural zeitgeist and socio-historical perspectives, but also in the
context of the changing confi guration of Britishness within larger, shift ing global
processes. Th e volume participants also reconsidered the eff ects and meaning of
headline events and cultural shift s such as the Great Depression, Proletarian
Literature, the Popular Front, the Second World War, the emergence of the
Welfare State, and the Cold War to name only a very few. Perhaps ironically to
prove the point about the possibilities inherent in such an approach, in his LRB
article Mount concedes that ‘For the historian . . . if the 1950s are famous for
anything, it is for being dull’, adding a comment on the ‘shiny barbarism of the
new affl uence’. Hence, even for Mount, a decade may still possess certain unifying
qualities, those shaping and shaped by its overriding cultural mood.
Aft er the various symposia had taken place at Brunel, guided by the editors of
the particular volumes, the individuals dispersed and wrote up their papers into
viii Series Editors’ Preface
full-length chapters (generally 10,000–12,000 words but in some cases longer),
revised in the light of other papers, the workshop discussions and subsequent
further research. Th ese chapters form the core of the book series, which,
therefore, may be seen as the result of a collaborative research project bringing
together initially twenty-four academics from Britain, Europe and North
America. Four further seminars and volumes have now added scholars to this
ongoing project, which is continuing to expand.
Each volume shares a common, although not necessarily identical, structure.
Following a critical introduction shaped by research, the fi rst chapter of each
volume addresses the ‘Literary History of the Decade’ by off ering an overview of the
key writers, themes, issues and debates, including such factors as emergent literary
practices, deaths, prizes, controversies, key developments, movements and best-
sellers. Th e next two chapters are generally themed around topics that have been
specially chosen for each decade, and which also relate to themes of the preceding
and succeeding decades, enabling detailed readings of key texts to emerge in full
historical and theoretical context. Th e tone and context having been set in this way,
the remaining chapters fi ll out a complex but comprehensible picture of each
decade. A ‘Colonial/Postcolonial/Ethnic Voices’ chapter addresses the ongoing
experience and legacy of Britain’s Empire and the rise of a new globalization, which
is arguably the most signifi cant long-term infl uence on contemporary British
writing. A chapter will focus on women’s writing and that particular gendered form
of voice, perception and written response to both literary impulses and historical
eventfulness. Various other chapters with a variety of focuses are added according
to the dynamics and literary compulsions of each particular decade, which may
feature international contexts or a specifi c sub-genre of the novel form, for instance.
Each decade is diff erent, but common threads are seen to emerge.
In the future it is planned that the Decades Series will go back to 1920 and
forward to 2020, in eff ect reconnecting Contemporary British Fictions with their
modern precursors from the aft ermath of the First World War, linking the last
hundred years through a detailed and forensic examination of its literary fi ction.
Works cited
Kermode , Frank . Th e Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Th eory of Fiction . Oxford :
Oxford University Press , 1967 .
Mount , Ferdinand . ‘ Th e Doctrine of Unripe Time .’ L ondon Review of Books 28 ( 22 ) ( 16
November 2006 ): 28–30 , http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n22/ferdinand-mount/the-
doctrine-of-unripe-time: n.p.
Contributors
Sabujkoli (Sabu) Bandopadhyay works at the University of Regina, Canada.
She received her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Alberta
in 2016. Th e majority of her current research and writing focuses on the
representations and the problems of representations of the subaltern in relation
to working-class historiography (in the contexts of colonialism, modernity and
globalization). On a grand scale, she is interested in studying how the literary
sphere has responded to social and political movements in the various pockets
of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the global north. Her work is infl uenced by
the thoughts of Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Frantz Fanon and Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak amongst others.
Nick Hubble is Professor of Modern and Contemporary English at Brunel
University London, UK. Th ey are the author of M ass-Observation and Everyday
Life: Culture, History, Th eory (2006/2010) and Th e Proletarian Answer to the
Modernist Question (2017); co-author of Ageing, Narrative and Identity (2013);
co-editor of Th e Science Fiction Handbook (2013), L ondon in Contemporary
British Fiction (2016), Th e Science Fiction of Iain M. Banks (2018), Working-Class
Writing: Th eory and Practice (2018) and four volumes of Bloomsbury’s ‘British
Fiction: Th e Decades Series’: Th e 1970s (2014), Th e 1990s (2015), Th e 2000s
(2015) and Th e 1950s (2018); and also co-editor of special issues of the journals
EnterText , Literary London and New Formations . Nick has published journal
articles or book chapters on writers including Pat Barker, Ford Madox Ford, B.S.
Johnson, Naomi Mitchison, George Orwell, Christopher Priest, John Sommerfi eld
and Edward Upward.
Natasha Periyan ’s research examines modernist and interwar literature and
women’s writing. She was a Research Associate at the University of Kent on the
AHRC-funded project ‘Literary Culture, Meritocracy and the Assessment of
Intelligence in Britain and America, 1880–1920’ and has held teaching positions
at Goldsmiths, Falmouth, Royal Holloway and the New College of the Humanities.
She has published articles and book chapters on writers including Virginia
Woolf, George Orwell, D.H. Lawrence, Vera Brittain and Storm Jameson.
Her book, Th e Politics of 1930s British Literature: Education, Gender, Class
ix