The Feminine Middlebrow Novel, 1920s to 1950s: Class, Domesticity, and Bohemianism

by Nicola Humble

Overview

"Middlebrow" has always been a dirty word, used disparagingly since its coinage in the mid-1920s for the sort of literature thought to be too easy, insular and smug. Aiming to rehabilitate the feminine middlebrow, Nicola Humble argues that the novels of writers such as Rosamund Lehmann, Elizabeth Taylor, Stella Gibbons, Nancy Mitford, played a powerful role in establishing and consolidating, but also in resisting, new class and gender identities in this period of volatile change for both women and the middle classes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199269334
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2004
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	284
Product dimensions:	8.46(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Nicola Humble is Senior Lecturer, University of Surrey Roehampton

Table of Contents

1. ‘Books Do Furnish a Room': Readers and Reading2. ‘Not Our Sort': The Re-Formation of Middle-Class Identities3. Imagining the Home4. The Eccentric Family5. A Crisis of Gender?BibliographyIndex

Editorial Reviews

"A fascinating study of literary culture, which offers many intriguing tasters of the novels themselves. The bizarre characters and scenarios, and the conscious ironies of some of these 'good bad books' leave one curious to read more."—Times Literary Supplement

"Humble is a clear-eyed reader, and her passions lie just under the surface of her jargon-free prose."—Choice

From the Publisher