Afterword

This concluding chapter first turns to Virginia Woolf's famous remark that ‘on or about December 1910 human character changed’. It examines the problems inherent in taking too seriously Virginia Woolf's tongue-in-cheek claim for December 1910 as a starting point for artistic development in Britain in the twentieth century. The lasting influence of these inflexible interpretations of Woolf's thesis has hampered our understanding of what lies on the other side of this putative watershed. The chapter then re-examines the designation of this period's literature as ‘Edwardian’, and lays out the potentially problematic and misleading nature of this label before conceding that, despite the label's shortcomings, the term ‘Edwardian’ still has its uses.

Department of Internal Affairs: England and the Countryside

This chapter investigates the vexed question of the ‘Condition of England’ via an examination of ‘England’ as an entity in the period's poetry, its non-fiction topographical and nature writing, and lastly in that most Edwardian of literary forms, the country-house novel. It first traces the contested notions of England and Englishness that appeared in Edwardian verse. While the characteristic mode of the era's poetry is pastoral and nostalgic, writers such as Kipling defined a model of England that might provide a rallying cry to stimulate the defence of a battered and vulnerable post-war nation. The chapter then explores the ways in which topographical writers repackaged England for a largely armchair urban audience. Finally, the chapter examines one of those key classes of Englishness: the country house, which was used to explore the question of England's inheritance.

Department of Decadence: Sex, Cars and Money

This chapter investigate Edwardian modernity via three areas which epitomised this quality for many readers of the day: sex, cars, and money. Investigations into the first of these categories reveal the existence of a thriving and often quite explicit commentary on sex in the fiction of the day. Next, while concentrating on the motorcar as the embodiment of Edwardian technological modernity, the chapter also uncovers a wider fascination for the latest ‘thing’ in a range of contemporary publications. Finally, this chapter concentrates on the issue of money (and the corruption that it often implies in the period's literature) in the New Drama of the day.

Department of War and External Affairs: The Anglo-Boer War and Imperialism

This chapter examines the response of writers to the 1899–1902 Boer War (or the Anglo-Boer War, as it is now more commonly known) in particular, looking at the work that emerged during the time of the conflict. It demonstrates how the war's role in focusing the anxieties felt by ordinary British and British Empire citizens about the efficacy and sustainability of British imperialism is especially evident in the literature which emerged both during the conflict and in the ensuing years of the decade. It goes on to investigate ‘invasion literature’, a popular genre of writing that imagined an often vulnerable and unprepared Britain being attacked and conquered by rival imperial powers. The chapter then examines the idea of Empire as discussed in the fiction of Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, and John Buchan.

Children’s Department: Edwardian Children’s Literature

This chapter focuses on the appearance of much memorable children's literature during what has come to be known as its ‘Golden Age’. Covering the work of three of the main innovators in this field, this chapter shows how new writers reinvented existing popular forms of writing for children to make them attractive and newly relevant for readers in the new century. It first looks at how Beatrix Potter's animal tales illustrate the ways in which new production techniques had comprehensively transformed the appearance of children's books at this time. The chapter then investigates the fiction of E. Nesbit, looking at the ways in which she modernised several forms of writing — in particular the fantastical tale and the family story — that had long proved popular with child readers. Finally, one of the most enduring genres of children's literature, the school story, is discussed through the work of P. G. Wodehouse.

Introduction

This introductory chapter stresses the importance of a re-examination of Edwardian literature. It briefly considers what Edwardian literature in its various forms meant to the Edwardians themselves, to try to understand those ‘differences and disagreements’ that made the period's writing so lively and variegated in its contemporary moment. The chapter explores the cultural, political, and technological context against the backdrop of which Edwardian writings had thrived, and draws parallels between many of the authors who had come to exemplify Edwardian writing and Harry Gordon Selfridge, the entrepreneur proprietor of the era's major new London department store. Here, the chapter argues that the ‘great Edwardian literary emporium’ was designed to profoundly transform the existing horizons of those who entered through its doors. In addition, the chapter considers a sampling of critical surveys and monographs on the subject of Edwardian literature.

Department of Administration: Office Clerks and Shop Assistants

This chapter registers the significant shift that took place in the social and cultural fabric of the publishing industry in the first decade of the new century, and traces its effects. To what extent, this chapter asks, did the office boys and counter-jumpers, who were so much a feature of the Edwardian literary scene, actually succeed in reshaping the literary world in their own image? The chapter begins by tracing the rise to prominence of two writers, Arnold Bennett and H. G. Wells, whose names have since become inextricably associated with the term ‘Edwardian’. Their ability to profit from the favourable literary conditions in this period is examined in context with other writers of their class and generation who were, to use a characteristic phrase of the day, ‘getting on’.