Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the British Essay
- The Cambridge History of the British Essay
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Preface to a History in the Manner of an Essay
- Part I Forming the British Essay
- Part II The Great Age of the British Essay
- Part III Assaying Culture, Education, Reform
- Part IV Fractured Selves, Fragmented Worlds
- 29 The Preface Essay
- 30 A Brief History of Travel and the Essay
- 31 Grist for the Mill: History and the Essay in India, 1870–1920
- 32 The African Gold Coast Essay: Straddling Fact and Prophecy
- 33 The Short Essay in Context, 1870–1920
- 34 A Room of One’s Own: The New Woman and the Essay
- 35 The Essay in the Age of Catastrophe
- 36 Undiplomatic Relations: Modernism and the Essay
- 37 Feeling Real: Psychoanalysis and the Essay
- 38 Transatlantic Essayism
- Part V The Essay and the Essayistic Today
- Book part
- Bibliography
- Index
38 - Transatlantic Essayism
from Part IV - Fractured Selves, Fragmented Worlds
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 October 2024
- The Cambridge History of the British Essay
- The Cambridge History of the British Essay
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Preface to a History in the Manner of an Essay
- Part I Forming the British Essay
- Part II The Great Age of the British Essay
- Part III Assaying Culture, Education, Reform
- Part IV Fractured Selves, Fragmented Worlds
- 29 The Preface Essay
- 30 A Brief History of Travel and the Essay
- 31 Grist for the Mill: History and the Essay in India, 1870–1920
- 32 The African Gold Coast Essay: Straddling Fact and Prophecy
- 33 The Short Essay in Context, 1870–1920
- 34 A Room of One’s Own: The New Woman and the Essay
- 35 The Essay in the Age of Catastrophe
- 36 Undiplomatic Relations: Modernism and the Essay
- 37 Feeling Real: Psychoanalysis and the Essay
- 38 Transatlantic Essayism
- Part V The Essay and the Essayistic Today
- Book part
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
From Francis Bacon to Zadie Smith, British essayists have played a crucial role in defining and interrogating the idea of transatlantic essayism. Not to be confused with its American form, which has been central to the promotion of exceptionalist cultural ideology in the United States from the Puritans to the present, British transatlantic essayism came into its own in the early twentieth century. Beginning with an account of D.H. Lawrence’s essays and their critical engagement with Americanness, this chapter explores the development of transatlantic essayism in the work of key essayists for whom the Anglo-American context has been of central importance, including W.H. Auden, Christopher Hitchens, Pico Iyer, Martin Amis, and Zadie Smith. What emerges is both a history of British transatlantic essayism and an account of the ways in which it continues to complicate our sense of the modern essay’s development on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of the British Essay , pp. 570 - 584Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024