The term 'modernism', central to English-language criticism of early twentieth-century literature at least since Laura Riding and Robert Graves published their Survey of Modernist Poetry in 1927, has continually widened in scope. Contemporary scholars often describe modernism, understood as a cosmopolitan movement in literature and the arts reflecting a crisis of representation, as having arisen in Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century and developing up to, and even after, the Second World War. Even so classic and wide-ranging an earlier account as the collection that Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane edited in 1976, Modernism: A Guide to European Literature, 1890-1930, today seems strangely limited in its historical timeframe. Modernism now seems to be a movement whose roots go back well over a century and whose effects are still being felt today.

This broadening of the concept’s historical boundaries has not always resulted in a similarly broad geographical perspective. The reassessment of modernism in the wake of postmodernism has led to the founding of the Modernist Studies Association and many similar scholarly groups; it has led to new explorations of the historical and social context of modern literature, notably with attention to questions of empire, gender, sexuality, political commitment, the role of avant-garde journals, and the status of long-neglected authors.