Overview

A richly illustrated study of the interplay of word and image in representations of the English countryside, built environment, and domestic space during the interwar period.During the 1920s and 30s, words and pictures in print were the main way in which people received ideas and entertainment, the two working together in a great variety of forms. Many books of the twenties argued against the loss of the countryside because of suburban building. But the demand for post-war building was great and, following the lead of a government report, many books appeared that showed house designs, allowing readers to design or imagine their ownership. Book designs became attractive, helped by colourful dust jackets and internal pictures. Magazines developed individual talents and special interests for both men and women. And, at the periods close, word and image were combined to publicise the growing RAF and give advice about protecting houses from bombing. In all these, words and images worked together as a complex form of art, communication, and entertainment.

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9780198828921

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Reviews

Sillars has a rare ability to read print conventionssuch as the layouts, typography, image reproduction technologies, bindings, formats, and other featuresthat orchestrate the relations among texts and images on the page. Whether pointing out the appearance of a modern font, such as that designed by Edward Johnston and familiarized to a broad public through its use in the signage of the London Underground, or a drawing whose tonal value or particular line quality suggest an earlier era of illustration, Sillars shows the reader how the graphical qualities work as cultural objects of production and reception. * Johanna Drucker, from a review forthcoming in Art History *

an impressive book that demonstrates how words and images were combined in interwar England to create a complex form of art, communication, instruction, and entertainment. * Hugh Clout, UCL, Cercles * Stuart Sillars's Picturing England Between the Wars identifies new ways that word and image worked in relation to each other after the Great War, evoking together resonances beyond the capacity of either medium alone, thus giving expression to new and profound feelings in a battered England. Those feelings include not only a collective grief but also a rediscovered and sustaining sense of Englishness. The book shows how words combined with increasingly influential visual imagery to refashion for the middling class a sense of England's past that could be brought into continuity with its present and future, as revealed through the objects and media of everyday life. Sillars writes with deep learning and authority yet with an exemplary lucidity of thought and expression. Groundbreaking in conception, this book is also a pleasure to read. * Kent Cartwright, Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland * Sillars has a rare ability to read print conventionssuch as the layouts, typography, image reproduction technologies, bindings, formats, and other featuresthat orchestrate the relations among texts and images on the page. Whether pointing out the appearance of a modern font, such as that designed by Edward Johnston and familiarized to a broad public through its use in the signage of the London Underground, or a drawing whose tonal value or particular line quality suggest an earlier era of illustration, Sillars shows the reader how the graphical qualities work as cultural objects of production and reception. * Johanna Drucker, from a review forthcoming in Art History *

Author Information

Stuart Sillars read English and Music at the University of Exeter and after working in a series of further and higher education, including the Open University and the faculty of English at Cambridge, he was appointed Professor of English at Bergen where he teaches across a range of topics and levels. His MA degree was concerned with music and poetry and this developed his interest in relations between the arts. His most recent volume reflects an earlier and continuing interest in the social, intellectual, and cultural forms of the years between the two world wars.

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