Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- General Editor's Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Department of War and External Affairs: The Anglo-Boer War and Imperialism
- 2 Department of Administration: Office Clerks and Shop Assistants
- 3 Children's Department: Edwardian Children's Literature
- 4 Department of Decadence: Sex, Cars and Money
- 5 Department of Internal Affairs: England and the Countryside
- Afterword
- Works Cited
- Index
2 - Department of Administration: Office Clerks and Shop Assistants
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 April 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- General Editor's Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Department of War and External Affairs: The Anglo-Boer War and Imperialism
- 2 Department of Administration: Office Clerks and Shop Assistants
- 3 Children's Department: Edwardian Children's Literature
- 4 Department of Decadence: Sex, Cars and Money
- 5 Department of Internal Affairs: England and the Countryside
- Afterword
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
When H. G. Wells looked back upon his life in Experiment in Autobiography (1934), he remembered the period of his literary apprenticeship with fondness:
The last decade of the nineteenth century was an extraordinarily favourable time for new writers and my individual good luck was set in the luck of a whole generation of aspirants. Quite a lot of us from nowhere were ‘getting on’. (506)
New openings in the 1890s provided Wells’ generation from ‘nowhere’ with ample opportunity to embark upon their careers, and the early years of the new century allowed them to consolidate their positions in the publishing trade. Indeed, during the Edwardian period, Wells and his fellow literary newcomers began to take control of the field that they had inherited from their Victorian predecessors. The extent of the shift that had taken place in literary power structures is evident in the ways in which Wells’ fellow former shopmen and ex-clerks were, by the close of the Edwardian decade, occupying key positions not only as writers of fiction, but also as essayists, reviewers, literary agents, editors, illustrators and publishers. A notable feature of this generation was their commitment, both as writers and as facilitators of writing, to raising the profile, in print culture, of the suburban and provincial worlds from which many of them had emerged. Although Wells and his friend Arnold Bennett led the charge to foreground literary representations of modern lower-middle-class life, many like-minded individuals followed in their wake. Beginning with an examination of the Edwardian careers of Bennett and Wells, the archetypal members of their class and generation of authors, this chapter then goes on to consider the emergence on the literary scene of several now-neglected writers, including W. Pett Ridge and Edwin Pugh, whose work was also primarily focused on ‘ordinary’ suburban life. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the role played by the new generation of literary agents and editors in shaping the literature of the day.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Literature of the 1900sThe Great Edwardian Emporium, pp. 43 - 82Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2017