Introduction: Middlebrow Matters

Abstract

The aim of this collection is to demonstrate that the middlebrow matters. The term ‘middlebrow’ itself, first used in the 1920s, is the product of powerful anxieties about cultural authority and processes of cultural transmission. It is a nexus for prejudice towards the lower middle classes, the feminine and domestic, and towards narrative modes regarded as outdated. Unless the rhetorical uses of this term are understood, the material culture from which any text in the twentieth century has been generated, the way that most American and British readers come to those texts and the way we teach canonical literature from the period will not be fully informed. The essays in this collection address the period 1920–1960, when the ‘battle of the brows’ was at its height. However, the cultural anxieties of this time continue to inform our attitudes to literary culture today.