End of empire and the English novel since 1945

This book explores the history of postwar England during the end of empire through a reading of novels which appeared at the time. Several genres are discussed, including the family saga, travel writing, detective fiction and popular romances. In the mid 1950s, Montagu Slater's brief essay in Arena is the first of a group of contributions, with the authors' warning of a growing American monopoly in cultural expression. Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Josephine Tey are now the best remembered representatives of the distaff side of Britain's Golden Age of crime fiction which extended well into the early postwar period. The book focuses on the reception of John Masters' novels, the sequence of novels known as the 'Savage family saga'. William Golding's 'human condition' is very much an English condition, diagnosed amid the historical upheavals of the mid-twentieth century. Popular romance novels were read by thousands throughout Britain and across the world, and can be understood as a constituent element in a postwar colonial discourse. William Boyd's fiction displays a marked alertness to the repercussions of fading imperial grandeur; his A Good Man in Africa, explores the comic possibilities of Kinjanja, a fictional country based on Nigeria. Penelope Lively's tangential approach to writing about empire in Moon Tiger suggests ambivalence and uncertainty about how to represent a colonial past which is both recent and firmly entrenched in ideas of national identity. "This first book-length study explores the history of post-war England during the end of empire through a reading of novels which appeared at that time, moving from George Orwell and William Golding to Penelope Lively, Alan Hollinghurst and Ian McEwan. Particular genres are also discussed, including the family saga, travel writing, detective fiction and popular romances. All included reflect on the predicament of an England which no longer lies at the centre of imperial power, arriving at a fascinating diversity of conclusions about the meaning and consequences of the end of empire. Some explicitly address the empire and its demise; others do so in a more muted form. Gilmour and Schwarz link together the historical question of the end of the British empire with the literary issue of the place of the English novel in the post-war years, for the first time addressing the literary responses and the privileged location of the novel for discussing what decolonisation meant for the domestic English population of the metropole. Rather than emphasizing the 'provincial' properties, emphasis is given to the curious echoes and displacements which operate inside the English postwar novel during the years of decolonization. This will interest scholars and general readers concerned with the fate of the English novel and the domestic impact of decolonisation, and is an important inclusion to the expanding historical canon which deals with the end of empire."--Publisher description Front matter Contents Acknowledgements Contributors Introduction: End of empire and the English novel The road to Airstrip One: Anglo-American attitudes in the English fiction of mid-century Josephine Tey and her descendants: conservative modernity and the female crime novel Colonial fiction for liberal readers: John Masters and the Savage family saga The entropy of Englishness: reading empire’s absence in the novels of William Golding The empire of romance: love in a postcolonial climate Passage from Kinjanja to Pimlico: William Boyd’s comedy of imperial decline Unlearning empire: Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger ‘I am not the British Isles on two legs’: travel fiction and travelling fiction from D.H. Lawrence to Tim Parks Queer histories and postcolonial intimacies in Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty The return of the native: Pat Barker, David Peace and the regional novel after empire Saturday’s Enlightenment Afterword: The English novel and the world Available in paperback for the first time, this first book-length study explores the history of postwar England during the end of empire through a reading of novels which appeared at the time, moving from George Orwell and William Golding to Penelope Lively, Alan Hollinghurst and Ian McEwan. Particular genres are also discussed, including the family saga, travel writing, detective fiction and popular romances. All included reflect on the predicament of an England which no longer lies at the centre of imperial power, arriving at a fascinating diversity of conclusions about the meaning and consequences of the end of empire and the privileged location of the novel for discussing what decolonization meant for the domestic English population of the metropole. The book is written in an easy style, unburdened by large sections of abstract reflection. It endeavours to bring alive in a new way the traditions of the English novel. First book-length critical work devoted to the impact of the end of empire and traces of imperial memory in mainstream English Literature since the Second World War. Authors studied include Josephine Tey, William Golding, Penelope Lively, David Peace and Ian McEwan. Represents the best of current scholarship.