Overview

Who would have expected Jane Austen to be up-to-date on gun technology or Virginia Woolf to recognise the class politics of plumbing? Austen and Woolf are materialists, this book argues. 'Things' in their novels give us entry into some of the most contentious issues of the day. This wholly materialist understanding produces worldly realism, an experimental writing practice which asserts egalitarian continuity between people, things and the physical world. This radical redistribution of the importance of material objects and biological existence, challenges the traditional idealist hierarchy of mind over matter that has justified gender, class and race subordination. Entering their writing careers at the critical moments of the French Revolution and the First World War respectively, and sharing a political inheritance of Scottish Enlightenment scepticism, Austen's and Woolf's rigorous critiques of the dangers of mental vision unchecked by facts is more timely than ever in the current world dominated by fundamentalist neo-liberal, religious and nationalist belief systems. Key Features The book uses close readings from Sense and Sensibility, Mrs Dalloway, Emma, The Waves, Persuasion and The Years to demonstrate the materialist sensibilities of Austen and WoolfIt traces the anti-individualism of their view of self and consciousness as deriving from embodied experienceEach chapter foregrounds the constitutive interrelationship of things, people, social and physical worldsThe book reconceptualises a progressive view of realism worldly realism drawing upon Jacques Ranciere's thesis that a new democratic aesthetic regime is inaugurated around the end of the eighteenth century

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9781474437691

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Reviews

These refreshing essays remind us of what we have lost in forgetting May Sinclair and do much to restore her to her rightful place as a pioneering writer and intellectual. Bowler and Drewery deserve praise for reviving Sinclair's reputation, a revival that is likely to last far longer than her shameful neglect. -- Scott McCracken, Queen Mary University of London

These refreshing essays remind us of what we have lost in forgetting May Sinclair and do much to restore her to her rightful place as a pioneering writer and intellectual. Bowler and Drewery deserve praise for reviving Sinclair's reputation, a revival that is likely to last far longer than her shameful neglect. -- Scott McCracken, Queen Mary University of London

Though writing a century apart and enjoining readers to think in such different ways about human experience, Austen and Woolf are like no other novelists so much as they are like each other. Or so Morris shows. Her concept of 'worldly realism' not only distinguishes the signature techniques of these two major British novelists, but also demonstrates--brilliantly, to my mind--how their very singularity links them to one another: each author brings a strain of skeptical realism derived from the Scottish Enlightenment to bear on a geopolitical world in a state of flux.--Nancy Armstrong, Duke University ...there are plenty of insights about Woolf's works especially Mrs. Dalloway, The Waves and The Years, as well as enlightening social history.--Sarah M. Hall ""Virginia Woolf Bulletin 57""

These refreshing essays remind us of what we have lost in forgetting May Sinclair and do much to restore her to her rightful place as a pioneering writer and intellectual. Bowler and Drewery deserve praise for reviving Sinclair's reputation, a revival that is likely to last far longer than her shameful neglect. -- Scott McCracken, Queen Mary University of London

Author Information

Pam Morris is an independent scholar, previously Professor of Critical Studies and Head of the Research Centre for Literature and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University.

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