A major new survey of literature in England during the first half of the twentieth century, Chris Baldick places modernist with non-modernist writings, high art with low entertainment. The Modern Movement ranges broadly covering psychological novels, war poems, detective stories, satires, children's books, and other literary forms evolving in response to the new anxieties and exhilarations of twentieth-century life.

The Oxford English Literary History is the new century's definitive account of a rich and diverse literary heritage that stretches back for a millennium and more. Each of these groundbreaking volumes offers a leading scholar's considered assessment of the authors, works, cultural traditions, events, and the ideas that shaped the literary voices of their age. The series will enlighten and inspire not only everyone studying, teaching, and researching in English Literature, but all serious readers. This exciting new volume provides a freshly inclusive account of literature in England in the period before, during, and after the First World War. Chris Baldick places the modernist achievements of Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, and James Joyce within the rich context of non-modernist writings across all major genres, allowing 'high' literary art to be read against the background of 'low' entertainment. Looking well beyond the modernist vanguard, Baldick highlights the survival and renewal of realist traditions in these decades of post-Victorian disillusionment. Ranging widely across psychological novels, war poems, detective stories, satires, and children's books, The Modern Movement provides a unique survey of the literature of this turbulent time.

As David Matless argues in this book—updated in this accessible, pocket edition—landscape has been central to definitions of Englishness for centuries. It is the aspect of English life where visions of the past, present, and future have met in debates over questions of national identity, disputes over history and modernity, and ideals of citizenship and the body. Extensively illustrated, Landscape and Englishness explores just how important the aesthetics of Britain’s cities and countryside have been to its people. Matless examines a wide range of material, including topographical guides, health manuals, paintings, poetry, architectural polemics, photography, nature guides, and novels. Taking readers to the interwar period, he explores how England negotiated the modern and traditional, the urban and rural, the progressive and preservationist, in its decisions over how to develop the countryside, re-plan cities, and support various cultures of leisure and citizenship. Tracing the role of landscape to Englishness from then up until the present day, he shows how familiar notions of heritage in landscape are products of the immediate post-war era, and he unveils how the present always resonates with the past.

Reevaluates the accomplishments of the British writer within the context of major literary movements and cross-currents. It considers all areas of his work including his stories of country life; war stories and novels; his best work, Love for Lydia; and his highly acclaimed nonfiction on environmental issues.

Concern about the 'decline of community', and the theme of 'community spirit', are internationally widespread in the modern world. The English past has featured many representations of declining community, expressed by those who lamented its loss in quite different periods and in diverse genres. This book analyses how community spirit and the passing of community have been described in the past – whether for good or ill – with an eye to modern issues, such as the so-called 'loneliness epidemic' or the social consequences of alternative structures of community. It does this through examination of authors such as Thomas Hardy, James Wentworth Day, Adrian Bell and H.E. Bates, by appraising detective fiction writers, analysing parish magazines, considering the letter writing of the parish poor in the 18th and 19th centuries, and through the depictions of realist landscape painters such as George Morland. K. D. M. Snell addresses modern social concerns, showing how many current preoccupations had earlier precedents. In presenting past representations of declining communities, and the way these affected individuals of very different political persuasions, the book draws out lessons and examples from the past about what community has meant hitherto, setting into context modern predicaments and judgements about 'spirits of community' today.