Modernist Urban Nostalgia and British Metropolitan Writing, 1908–1934

Abstract

Virtually every reader of British modernist literature is familiar with how nostalgia in the period often takes the specific form of a longing for the vanished or vanishing rural forms of life, typically associated with the literary tradition surrounding the country house and insightfully analyzed by Sarah Edwards in her contribution to this collection. In contrast, this essay locates a type of modernist nostalgia within the metropolitan London scene and addresses how this longing appeared and functioned within the discourse on music hall produced by urban writers in the early twentieth century. Indeed, much of the writing on popular entertainment in the British metropolis in this era often philosophized regarding the diminishing popularity of music hall, the nation’s first mass entertainment, and its replacement by cinema as the primary leisure activity in Britain. The transformation was thought to reflect broader changes within the city, including the increased mechanization of the metropolis. The response of modernists to the city went against the grain of modernist ideology, which, by and large, did not fondly recall the Victorian age. Indeed, in this case, the demise of community implied in the passing of music hall London actually occasioned a lot of hand-wringing by literary intellectuals. I argue here that modernist nostalgia for music hall was not merely a higher form of whining, but quickly became a forum where the social effects of new forms of modernity were critically examined.