The period from 1890 to 1940 saw the publication of a very large number of good novels, including some of the greatest in the language. The period since then has seen the publication of immense quantities of criticism directed towards those novels. A comprehensive study of even one of the major novelists - Conrad, say, or Joyce or Lawrence—must be the work of years. What, then, do I hope to do in one study of the fiction of those fifty years? The answer is obvious enough: provide an introduction. What is not so obvious is what sort of introduction. This book is not offered as a survey of fiction; if it mentioned every novel which is still worth reading it would become a slimly annotated bibliography, of which there are a number, some of which I recommend on pages 243–44. It is not an attempt to classify novelists into schools or groups; there are obviously writers whom it is sensible to compare with one another, but one of the few generalizations which I would make about fiction of this period is that it was extraordinarily varied and cannot be fitted into categories. It is not a digest of critical thinking about the period; though I discuss different critical opinions about, say, Joyce and Bennett, I am sure that our starting point must be a close engagement with specific texts. What I do offer, then, is detailed discussion of individual novels and, on the basis of this, some account of the novelists’ work in general and an introduction to certain general issues which emerge from the books. Most of the chapters concentrate on individual novelists; chapters 6, 9 and 11 tackle the general matters.
The book is not arranged chronologically because I do not believe that—except in some very obvious ways—writers as astonishingly different from one another as Hardy, Conrad and Joyce (not to mention Kipling, Lawrence and Compton-Burnett) can usefully be considered as parts of a developing tradition. I have chosen instead to deal with major works by a number of writers who seem to have some preoccupations in common and to compare and contrast them. Thus, for example, Conrad, Kipling and Forster were all preoccupied by questions of power and dominance; I discuss them one after another and follow this with a chapter which ruminates about how politics has been treated in this period by various writers and in various modes. Arnold Bennett and Virginia Woolf argued about how the novel could do justice to modern consciousness and this has become a famous set-piece battle in the war about ‘Modernism’. Accordingly I follow discussions of their works with a chapter on this general issue. A consideration of Joyce leads naturally to thoughts about changes in the reading public and the critical tradition, and to this I devote a chapter.
I particularly wish to draw attention to the Bibliographies. There are a number of writers whom I have not found room to discuss but whom others would wish included. The Author Bibliographies are not confined to the novelists whom I have chosen and each gives summary information about the writer’s life and works and suggests useful scholarly and critical studies. There are also six general bibliographies concerned with (i) historical and political background; (ii) cultural background; (iii) general studies of fiction; (iv) general studies of literature, 1890–1940; (v) studies of fiction in this period; (vi) bibliographies and editions. From time to time in the text I draw attention to some of these works, but I would recommend readers to refer to them throughout. They include numerous works which take a different line from my own and should continue the arguments which this book is intended to start.
Who are these readers of whom I speak? Primarily I think of them as the common readers with whom Dr. Johnson rejoiced to concur, but a large number of them now will be students in higher education, in universities, polytechnics, extra-mural classes. Since I have formed many of my ideas in the process of teaching and discussing with them I have obviously had them in mind.
The dates given for books in the text, footnotes and bibliographies are, unless specifically stated otherwise, for first publication in volume form. Place of publication, except for periodicals, is, unless otherwise stated, London. References to specific passages in novels are by chapter numbers in parentheses, e.g. (14), or, where appropriate by book and chapter number, e.g. (iv. 7). Raised numerals in the text refer to the notes at the end of each chapter.
I began writing this book during a period of sabbatical leave, for which I would like to thank the Department for External Studies of Oxford University. For the rest of the time that I was working on it I was teaching students of that Department, undergraduates of Pembroke College and various graduate students at Oxford. To them all I owe a debt. Like all critical studies this is a work of co-operation. I have learned from discussions with my students, with friends and with colleagues and I thank them all for what they have contributed. There are also a few more specific debts for which I wish to give thanks: to my editor, Michael Wheeler, for his patience; to my colleague, Lawrence Goldman, for historical advice; to Angie Sandham for typing and good humour and frequent exhortations to relax; above all to my wife for all those arguments about early modern literature, at the end of which, I think, she agrees with much of what is in this book. To her it is rightly dedicated.
D. H. December 1987