Abstract
The early twentieth century was a period of remarkable literary productivity, rich in quantity and quality, in experimentation and innovation. The publishing industry was expanded and modernised, and there was a huge increase in the production and sale of books. Various developments increased the demand for reading material. Elementary education became universal, and higher education was made available on an unprecedented scale. The public library system was developed. The growing trade union movement reacted against the excessive working hours imposed on the masses in the hey-day of Victorian capitalism, and a vast increase in leisure followed. This was happening in a period that was especially rich in major writers of genius who have taken their places alongside the great writers of the past. The age was also rich in writers of lesser rank who produced neither masterpieces nor works of outstanding imaginative power, but served their readers with works of high entertainment value and accomplished craftsmanship. In short, the age of Joyce and Eliot, Lawrence and Yeats, was also the age of Galsworthy and Wells, Wodehouse and Masefield.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Leon Edel & Gordon N. Ray (ed), Henry James and H. G. Wells ( Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1979 ), pp. 103–5.
Quoted by David Lodge (ed), 20th Century Literary Criticism ( London: Longman, 1972 ), p. 60
T. S. Eliot (ed), Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (1954).
Quoted by John Press, A Map of Modern English Verse ( London: Oxford University Press, 1969 ), p. 61.
Quoted by John Press, p. 38, from D. D. Paige (ed), The Letters of Ezra Pound 1907–1941 (1951), pp. 388–9.
Foreword to Sondra J. Stang (ed), The Ford Madox Ford Reader (London: Collins, 1987), p. viii.
Virginia Woolf, Contemporary Writers, with a Preface by Jean Guiguet (London: The Hogarth Press, 1965 ), p. 120.
Bernard Blackstone, Virginia Woolf (Writers and their Work), (Harlow: Longmans, Green, 1962), p.22.
E. M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy (London: Edward Arnold, 1951 ), pp. 232–2.
Richard Rees (ed), John Middleton Murry, Selected Criticism 1916–1957 (London: Oxford University Press, 1960 ), p. 4.
T. S. Eliot, For Lancelot Andrewes, Essays on Style and Order (London: Faber & Faber, 1970), p.7 (Preface).
T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood (London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1920), p. 53.
I. A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co Ltd, 1934 ), pp. 32–3.
I. A. Richards, Practical Criticism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1929), pp. 14–17.
William Empsom, Seven Types of Ambiguity (London: Chatto & Windus, revised 1953), p. 25.
R. P. Bilan, The Literary Criticism of F. R. Leavis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 95.
Denys Thompson, What to Read in English Literature (London: Heinemann, 1975), p. 115.
Owen Barfield, Poetic Diction (London: Faber & Gwyer, 1928), p. 148
G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire (London: Oxford University Press, 1930), p. 14
Copyright information
© 1991 Harry Blamires
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Blamires, H. (1991). The Twentieth Century: The Early Decades. In: A History of Literary Criticism. Macmillan History of Literature. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21495-2_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21495-2_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-51735-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-21495-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)