Housing, Class and Gender in Modern British Writing, 1880–2012

Housing, Class and Gender in Modern British Writing, 1880–2012 PDF

Author: Emily Cuming

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-08-24

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 1316710408

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Domestic interiors and housing environments have historically been portrayed as a framing device for the representation of individuals and social groups. Drawing together a wide and eclectic collection of well known, and less familiar, works by writers including Charles Booth, Octavia Hill, James Joyce, Pat O'Mara, Rose Macaulay, Patrick Hamilton, Sam Selvon, Sarah Waters, Lynsey Hanley and Andrea Levy, the author reflects upon and challenges various myths and truisms of 'home' through an analysis of four distinct British settings: slums, boarding houses, working-class childhood homes and housing estates. Her exploration of works of social investigation, fiction and life writing leads to an intricate stock of housing tales that are inherited, shifting and always revealing about the culture of our times. This book seeks to demonstrate how depictions of domestic space - in literature, history and other cultural forms - tell powerful and unexpected stories of class, gender, social belonging and exclusion.

Living with Strangers

Living with Strangers PDF

Author: Chiara Briganti

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-06-03

Total Pages: 171

ISBN-13: 1000182029

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Living with Strangers examines the history and cultural representation of bed-sitting rooms and boarding houses in England from the early twentieth century to the present. Providing a historical overview, the authors explore how these alternative domestic spaces came to provide shelter for a diverse demographic of working women and men, retired army officers, gay people, students, bohemians, writers, artists, performers, migrants and asylum seekers, as well as shady figures and criminals. Drawing on historical records, case studies, and examples from literature, art, and film, the book examines how the prevalence and significance of bedsits and boarding houses in novels, plays, detective stories, Ealing comedies, and contemporary fiction and film produced its own genre of narrative. The nine chapters are written by an international range of established and emerging scholars in the fields of literary studies, art and film history, political theory, queer studies and cultural studies. A lively, highly original study, Living with Strangers makes a significant contribution to the cross-disciplinary field of home studies and provides insight into a crucial aspect of British cultural history. It is essential reading for students and researchers in anthropology, history, literary studies, sociology, gender and sexuality studies, film studies and cultural studies.

The Working Class at Home, 1790–1940

The Working Class at Home, 1790–1940 PDF

Author: Joseph Harley

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-02-17

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 3030892735

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This book examines life in the homes inhabited by the working class over the long nineteenth century. These working-class homes are often imagined as distinctly unhomely spaces, which the inhabitants struggled to fill with even the most basic of furniture, let alone acquire the comforts associated with middle-class domestic space. The concerned reformers of industrialising towns and cities painted a picture of severe deprivation, of rooms that were both cramped yet bare at the same time, and disease-ridden spaces from which their subjects required rescue. It is an image which is not only inadequate, but which also robs working-class people of their agency in creating domestic spaces which allowed for the expression of personal and familial feeling. Bringing together emerging scholars who challenge these ideas and using a range of innovative sources and approaches, this edited collection presents a new understanding of working-class homes.

Home and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Literary London

Home and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Literary London PDF

Author: Robertson Lisa C. Robertson

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2020-06-18

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1474457908

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Explores radical designs for the home in the nineteenth-century metropolis and the texts that shaped themUncovers a series of innovative housing designs that emerged in response to London's rapid growth and expansion throughout the nineteenth century Brings together the writing of prominent authors such as Charles Dickens and George Gissing with understudied novels and essays to examine the lively literary engagement with new models of urban housing Focuses on the ways that these new homes provided material and creative space for thinking through the relationship between home and identity Identifies ways in which we might learn from the creative responses to the nineteenth-century housing crisis This book brings together a range of new models for modern living that emerged in response to social and economic changes in nineteenth-century London, and the literature that gave expression to their novelty. It examines visual and literary representations to explain how these innovations in housing forged opportunities for refashioning definitions of home and identity. Robertson offers readers a new blueprint for understanding the ways in which novels imaginatively and materially produce the city's built environment.

The Crisis of Capitalism in the Contemporary Novel

The Crisis of Capitalism in the Contemporary Novel PDF

Author: Andrew Rowcroft

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2024-02-05

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1476652171

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This book explores the role of radical ideas in contemporary fiction by nine critically acclaimed authors--Jonathan Lethem, Dana Spiotta, China Mieville, Thomas Pynchon, Rachel Kushner, Teddy Wayne, Colson Whitehead, Jacqueline Woodson, and Kim Stanley Robinson. All of them share interests in the politics of the left, the problems of protracted economic crisis, and the potentiality of post-capitalist ideas. Novels by these authors, this book argues, are defined by an imperative to confront current anxieties in left-thought, while, at the same time, evincing a nuanced degree of self-consciousness about the legacy of political radicalisms, the costs they accrue, and where they have led.

Single Lives

Single Lives PDF

Author: Katherine Fama

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2022-05-13

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1978828519

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Inspired by the current public fascination with single women, Single Lives traces the relationship between modern and contemporary representations of single women. The original essays collected here analyze a broad range of texts that examine the ways films, cookbooks, archives, popular literature, and other British and American texts express norms, ideals, and challenges for single women and their relationship to dominant ideals of marriage and the family. This volume looks backwards to constellate existing scholarship, constituent fields, and unrecognized single voices and forward to consider new methods for interdisciplinary singles studies.

Understanding Housing Policy

Understanding Housing Policy PDF

Author: Brian Lund

Publisher: Policy Press

Published: 2017-04-26

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1447330439

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What are the major housing problems in contemporary Britain, and how effective are the policies designed to tackle them? Since the second edition of Understanding Housing Policy was published in 2011, political and financial circumstances have transformed the answers to these questions. In this fully updated third edition, Brian Lund both explores how these policies developed and were implemented under the UK Coalition Government and looks ahead to the possible revisions under the new Conservative Government. Integrating the previous edition with new discussions of such subjects as the austerity agenda following the credit crunch, the impact of the Coalition Government's housing policies, and new policy ideas, Lund offers keen insight into the pervasive impact of need, demand, and supply as applied to the housing market and austerity policies.

Twenty-First-Century British Fiction and the City

Twenty-First-Century British Fiction and the City PDF

Author: Magali Cornier Michael

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-07-18

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 3319897284

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The essays in this edited collection offer incisive and nuanced analyses of and insights into the state of British cities and urban environments in the twenty-first century. Britain’s experiences with industrialization, colonialism, post-colonialism, global capitalism, and the European Union (EU) have had a marked influence on British ideas about and British literature’s depiction of the city and urban contexts. Recent British fiction focuses in particular on cities as intertwined with globalization and global capitalism (including the proliferation of media) and with issues of immigration and migration. Indeed, decolonization has brought large numbers of people from former colonies to Britain, thus making British cities ever more diverse. Such mixing of peoples in urban areas has led to both racist fears and possibilities of cosmopolitan co-existence.