MODERNISM AND THE LOCATIONS OF LITERARY HERITAGE

Transcription

1 MODERNISM AND THE LOCATIONS OF LITERARY HERITAGE Modernist writers in the early twentieth century aimed to write in inventive and transformative ways, but they lived in places celebrated for their association with the achievements of past generations. For E.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf, this contrast was strongly felt: living and writing in London, they found themselves in a city that was being fashioned as historic in ways incongruous with their own critical ideals. In this innovative study, reads the early writings of Forster, Eliot, and Woolf against the development of a growing heritage industry in England generally and London particularly. Her study offers new analyses of major works and a fascinating history of the making of literary and historical heritage in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain. andrea zemgulys is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. in this web service

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3 MODERNISM AND THE LOCATIONS OF LITERARY HERITAGE ANDREA ZEMGULYS in this web service

4 cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru, UK Published in the United States of America by, New York Information on this title: / This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of. First published 2008 First paperback edition 2011 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Zemgulys, Andrea. Modernism and the locations of literary heritage /. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn (hardback) 1. English literature 20th century History and criticism. 2. Modernism (Literature) Great Britain. 3. Literature and history Great Britain History 20th century. 4. Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan), Criticism and interpretation. 5. Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), Criticism and interpretation. 6. Woolf, Virginia, Criticism and interpretation. 7. London (England) Intellectual life 19th century. 8. London (England) Civilization 19th century. I. Title. pr 478.m6z dc isbn Hardback isbn Paperback has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. in this web service

5 Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements page vi vii Introduction 1 part one: heritage 1 English originals: literary heritage in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries 13 2 Reading in place: the subjects of literary geography 43 3 Making it newly old: heritage and memory in turn-of-the-century London 71 part two: modernism 4 Transit: modernism s London and E.M. Forster s Chelsea In London with a Baedeker: touring T.S. Eliot s The Waste Land Consummate labor: Virginia Woolf s trek to a better literature 145 Conclusion 191 Notes 196 Index 237 v in this web service

6 Illustrations 1 Map of Walter Scott s Ivanhoe page 23 2 Photograph of women modeling Charlotte Brontë s dresses 60 3 Map of the Pickwick Tours, Drawings of commemoration plaques 84 5 Plan of the Holywell Street, Kingsway and Aldwych Improvements 86 6 Map of Modern Chelsea, Shewing Position of Houses of Interest in the 18th and Present Centuries Photographs of Thomas Carlyles s hats exhibited by his birthplace cottage in Ecclefechan 149 vi in this web service

7 Acknowledgements I thank my many colleagues at the University of Michigan for reading and commenting on the drafts of this book, especially Anne Herrmann, John Whittier-Ferguson, Kali Israel, Sara Blair, Adela Pinch, John Kucich, Xiomara Santamarina, Lucy Hartley, Sarita See, Viv Soni, and Jennifer Wenzel. For discussing abstracts of this book, I thank Geoff Eley, David Porter, Sidonie Smith, and Patsy Yaeger. To the members of the Modernism Reading Group who helped clarify my arguments about Woolf, and to the members of First Draft who helped launch my chapter on Eliot, I also offer my appreciation. I thank the Modernist Studies Association and dozens of fellow seminar participants for several opportunities to circulate and discuss draft material. And I thank my editors at Cambridge University Press (Ray Ryan, Maartje Scheltens, and Liz Davies) for their excellent production support. This project was truly realized through the transformative and motivating manuscript workshop facilitated by Jonathan Freedman, led by Michael Levenson (of the University of Virginia) and attended by many other insightful colleagues and students (and again special thanks to Anne and Kali). Just as importantly, this project was defined and first attempted with the help of my dissertation advisers at the University of California, Berkeley Elizabeth Abel, Sharon Marcus, and the late Allan Pred. My year at the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London, fueled my efforts to not only read literature in place but also (and crucially) read the places of literature. There, I thank Felix Driver for generous advising and the members of Landscape Surgery for encouraging commentary. To Rachel Sturman and Christi Merrill, I am grateful for their tireless re-reading and cheering counsel (and I am still grateful to Anne Keary, Durba Ghosh, Catherine Hollis, and Michelle Mancini for much the same in the early days). To my family, both Zemgulys and Monnier, I am grateful for assistance, especially through the last stages of manuscript preparation; to my mother, the amazing Močiut_e Murphy, I am forever grateful. Finally, vii in this web service

8 viii Acknowledgements I give my thanks to John Monnier, for enduring, for sustaining, and for humoring me: I dedicate this book to him. Early versions of material from this book appeared as Building the Vanished City: Conservationism in Turn-of-the-Century London, Nineteenth-Century Prose 26:1 (Spring 1999), 35 58, and Night and Day is Dead : Virginia Woolf in London Literary and Historic, Twentieth-Century Literature 46:1 (Spring 2000), in this web service