To Exercise Our Talents : The Democratization of Writing in Britain

by Hilliard, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9780674021778
• ISBN10: 0674021770
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-04-15
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

In twentieth-century Britain the literary landscape underwent a fundamental change. Aspiring authors--traditionally drawn from privileged social backgrounds--now included factory workers writing amid chaotic home lives, and married women joining writers' clubs in search of creative outlets. In this brilliantly conceived book, Christopher Hilliard reveals the extraordinary history of "ordinary" voices. Writing as an organized pursuit emerged in the 1920s, complete with clubs, magazines, guidebooks, and correspondence schools. The magazine The Writer helped coordinate a network of "writers' circles" throughout Britain that offered prospective authors--especially women--outside the educated London elite a forum in which to discuss writing. The legacy of Wordsworth and other English Romantics encouraged the belief that would-be authors should write about what they knew personally--that art flowed from genuine experience and technique was of secondary importance. The 1930s saw a boom in the publication of so-called proletarian writing, working-class men writing "in my own language about my own people," as Birmingham writer Leslie Halward put it. During World War II, soldiers turned to poetry to cope with the trauma of war, and the popular magazine Seven promoted the idea that anyone, regardless of social background, could be a creative writer. Self-expression became a democratic right. In capturing the creative lives of ordinary people--would-be fiction-writers and poets who until now have left scarcely a mark on written history--Hilliard sensitively reconstructs the literary culture of a democratic age.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Literary History from Below	1	(11)
Middlemen, Markets, and Literary Advice	12	(22)
A Chance to Exercise Our Talents	34	(36)
Fiction and the Writing Public	70	(28)
In My Own Language about My Own People	98	(32)
Class, Patronage, and Literary Tradition	130	(33)
People's Writing and the People's War	163	(32)
The Logic of Our Times	195	(39)
Popular Writing after the War	234	(45)
Conclusion: On or About the End of the Chatterley Ban	279	(16)
Abbreviations	295	(2)
Notes	297	(68)
Manuscripts and Archives Consulted	365	(6)
Acknowledgments	371	(4)
Index	375