Writing the 1926 General Strike

Literature, Culture, Politics

Charles Ferrall, Dougal McNeill

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781107100039
• eBook ISBN:
  9781316237458
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Charles Ferrall and Dougal McNeill's book analyses the vast literary response to the 1926 General Strike. The Strike not only drew writers into political action but inspired literature that served to shape twentieth-century British views of class, culture and politics. While major figures active at the time wrote on or responded to this crucial moment, this is the first volume to address their respective works. Ferrall and McNeill show how novels then in progress, such as Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, were affected by the Strike, as well as the ways in which it has been remembered from the 1930s to the present. Their study sheds new light on the relationship between politics and literature of the modernist era.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Dedication
• Table of contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The Great Strike and Modern Memory
• Part I Writing from the Outside In
• Part II Writing from the Inside Out
• Conclusion: The General Strike’s Afterlives
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index