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In 1972, in an attempt to elevate the stature of the "crime novel," influential crime writer and critic Julian Symons cast numerous Golden Age detective fiction writers into literary perdition as "Humdrums," condemning their focus on puzzle plots over stylish writing and explorations of character, setting and theme. This volume explores the works of three prominent British "Humdrums"--Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, and Alfred Walter Stewart--revealing their work to be more complex, as puzzles and as social documents, than Symons allowed. By championing the intrinsic merit of these mystery writers, the study demonstrates that reintegrating the "Humdrums" into mystery genre studies provides a fuller understanding of the Golden Age of detective fiction and its aftermath.
From Sherlock Holmes onwards, fictional detectives use lenses: Ocular Proof and the Spectacled Detective in British Crime Fiction argues that these visual aids are metaphors for ways of seeing, and that they help us to understand not only individual detectives’ methods but also the kinds of cultural work detective fiction may do. It is sometimes regarded as a socially conservative form, and certainly the enduring popularity of ‘Golden Age’ writers such as Christie, Sayers, Allingham and Marsh implies a strong element of nostalgia in the appeal of the genre. The emphasis on visual aids, however, suggests that solving crime is not a simple matter of uncovering truth but a complex, sophis...
This book studies C.P. Snow's eleven-volume series of novels (Strangers and Brothers) as documents detailing the social and political life of mid-twentieth-century Britain, and points out the uses for the novels in the academic study of that time period. Both Snow and his central character, Lewis S. Eliot, started from unremarkable origins in terms of their mutual background in the lower reaches of the middle class, their dreams of success in their teen years, and their early professional education in a new, struggling academic institution in the mid-1920s. Neither could really be considered typical for men of their class. Eliot's working life would include being a very minor town clerk, a b...
An interdisciplinary study of the Impressionist/early Modernist works of Conrad and Ford, this book aims to show how the represented temporalities (whether to do with past, present, future experience within and without the novels, or logical/structural relations of ‘before’ and ‘after’) are at the core of the won effects of both authors’ oeuvres. Looking at such well-known works as Nostromo, The Good Soldier, The Fifth Queen, Parade’s End, the study makes use of philosophy (historical and contemporary), theology, psychoanalysis, and other sources, to re-describe, unlock and display the fertile ways in which time and historical experience are both manumitted within the tales analysed, and, recursively, within their reading experience. Ultimately, the two senses of ‘making you see’, from Conrad’s iconic Preface, are used as gambits to understand the ways in which these novels are metaphysically vibrant, symbolically hopeful- as against the more common interpretation of metaphysical dissolution and (over-determined) failure.
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This book considers the English Civil Wars and the civil wars in Scotland and Ireland through the lens of historical fiction—primarily fiction for the young. The text argues that the English Civil War lies at the heart of English and Irish political identities and considers how these identities have been shaped over the past three centuries in part by the children’s literature that has influenced the popular memory of the English Civil War. Examining nearly two hundred works of historical fiction, Farah Mendlesohn reveals the delicate interplay between fiction and history.
This book offers an introduction to the breadth and diversity of the literary and non-literary work of John Buchan (1875–1940). It stakes a claim for him as an engaged interpreter of twentieth-century modernity, and provides evaluative readings of his output. In addition to demonstrating how Buchan’s work complicates the reductive view of early twentieth-century literature as neatly cordoned-off into “low” and “high” forms of production, this book discusses his theories of empire and imperialism, his account of historiography, and his response to the First World War. In addition to his many roles as a journalist, propagandist, war reporter, editor, civil servant, and statesman, B...
The Multinational Mission, based on six years of research utilizing internal company documents and interviews with over 500 top executives in more than twenty global firms provides an explicit logic and a basis for top management to act. Using a comprehensive training framework called a responsiveness-integration grid authors C.K. Prahalad and Yves L. Doz show step by step how to formulate and implement strategic decisions that provide a winning innovative approach.
Few religious currents have been as influential as the Theosophical. Yet few currents have been so under-researched, and the Brill Handbook of the Theosophical Current thus represents pioneering research. A first section surveys the main people and events involved in the Theosophical Society from its inception to today, and outlines the Theosophical worldview. A second, substantial section covers most significant religions to emerge in the wake of the Theosophical Society - Anthroposophy, the Point Loma community, the I AM religious activity, the Summit Lighthouse Movement, the New Age, theosophical UFO religions, and numerous others. Finally, the interaction of the Theosophical current with contemporary culture - including gender relations, art, popular fiction, historiography, and science - are discussed at length.