WRITING THE 1926 GENERAL STRIKE

Transcription

1 WRITING THE 1926 GENERAL STRIKE Charles Ferrall and Dougal McNeill s book analyses the vast literary response to the 1926 General Strike. The Strike not only drew writers into political action but also inspired literature that served to shape twentieth-century British views of class, culture and politics. While major figures active at the time wrote on or responded to this crucial moment, this is the first volume to address their respective works. Ferrall and McNeill show how novels then in progress, such as Virginia Woolf s To the Lighthouse and D. H. Lawrence s Lady Chatterley s Lover, were affected by the Strike as well as the ways in which it has been remembered from the 1930s to the present. Their study sheds new light on the relationship between politics and literature of the modernist era. Charles Ferrall is Senior Lecturer in the English Programme at Victoria University of Wellington. Amongst the books he has published are Modernist Writing and Reactionary Politics and Juvenile Literature and British Society, , co-authored with Anna Jackson. Dougal McNeill is Lecturer in the English Programme at Victoria University of Wellington. He is the author of Forecasts of the Past: Globalisation, History, Realism, Utopia and has edited special issues of the International Journal of Scottish Literature and the Journal of New Zealand Literature. in this web service

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3 WRITING THE 1926 GENERAL STRIKE Literature, Culture, Politics CHARLES FERRALL Victoria University of Wellington DOUGAL MCNEILL Victoria University of Wellington in this web service

4 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY , usa is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. Information on this title: / Charles Ferrall and Dougal McNeill 2015 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 2015 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Ferrall, Charles. Writing the 1926 general strike : literature, culture, politics / Charles Ferrall, Victoria University of Wellington; Dougal McNeill, Victoria University of Wellington. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn (hardback) 1. English fiction 20th century History and criticism. 2. General Strike, Great Britain, 1926, in literature. 3. Politics and literature Great Britain. I. McNeill, Dougal, 1981 II. Title. pr888.p6f dc isbn Hardback has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. in this web service

5 For my family, Nell, Thomasina and Becky (CF) For Pauline, Eric, Bryony and Meghan (DM) in this web service

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7 Contents Acknowledgements page ix Introduction: The Great Strike and Modern Memory 1 Part I Writing from the Outside In 1 St George and the Beast: Conservative Responses to the Strike 21 2 The Aesthetic Fix: Wells, Chesterton, Bennett 43 3 In the Middle Way: Bloomsbury and the General Strike 61 4 Lady Chatterley and the End of the World 83 5 Poshocrats and the Orphan Class: The Auden Circle in the General Strike 104 Part II Writing from the Inside Out 6 The General Strike and Scottish Modernism The Education of Desire: Labour College Radicals, the General Strike and the Impossible Bildungsroman Remembering 1926: Working-Class Welsh Modernisms 164 Conclusion: The General Strike s Afterlives 181 Notes 191 Bibliography 211 Index 223 vii in this web service

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9 Acknowledgements Very many people have contributed to the making of this book. Special thanks are due to all of our colleagues in the English Programme, Victoria University of Wellington, in particular Harry Ricketts and Peter Whiteford. Shintaro Kono read an early draft of parts of this book and offered timely criticisms. We thank also the anonymous readers at for their insightful and constructive suggestions, and Ray Ryan for his editorial patience and support. Margot Schwass and Eleanor Tolland provided research assistance. In Britain, Jamie Allinson, Becky Branford, Neil Davidson and Owen Miller all provided much-needed support, as well as, in Jamie and Neil s case, offering comments on early drafts. For assistance with archival material we are happy to thank Sally Harrower and the staff at the National Library of Scotland; Charles Harrowell and the staff of Senate House Library, University of London; Julie Parry and her colleagues at the People s History Museum Archive and Study Centre, Manchester; and Koichi Inoue and the Inter-Library Loans team at Victoria University of Wellington. Rebecca Ellis was a constant source of support and encouragement, as always. (CF) Discussion and activity with comrades in the International Socialist Organisation shapes the understanding of the world and the project of working-class self-emancipation that underpins my analysis of the General Strike. Particular thanks goes to Linda Hardy, Giovanni Tiso and Shomi Yoon for ongoing moral and intellectual support and friendship. I was first taught an appreciation of literature and trade union values and solidarity by my family and most particularly by my mother, Pauline. It is appropriate, therefore, that my parts of this book are dedicated to them. (DM) ix in this web service