Awards

• Joint winner for Saltire Society/National Library of Scotland Scottish Research Book of the Year Award 2004.
• Winner of Saltire Society Research Book of the Year - Joint Winner 2004.

Overview

English Literature in the 1960s soon threw off its post-war weariness and the tepid influences of the previous decade. New voices, new visions, and new commitments profoundly reshaped writing during the sixties, and throughout the rest of the century. Drama thrived on its rapidly rebuilt foundations. New freedoms of style and form revitalised fiction. Poetry, too, gradually recovered the variety and inventiveness of earlier years.As well as comprehensively charting these changes in the literary field, Randall Stevenson persuasively pinpoints their origins in the historical, social, and intellectual pressures of the times. Literary developments are revealingly related to the wider evolution and profound changes in English experience in the late twentieth century - to shadows of war and loss of empire; declining influences of class; shifting relations between the genders; emergent minority and counter-cultures; and the broadening democratization of contemporary life in general.Analyses of the rise of literary theory, of publishing and the book trade, and of the pervasive influences of modernism and postmodernism contribute further to an impressively thorough, insightful description of writing in the later twentieth century - a literary period Stevenson shows to be far more imaginative and exciting than has yet been recognized. Lucid, accessible, and engaging, this volume of the Oxford English Literary History presents a unique illumination of its age - one we have lived through, but are only just beginning to understand. The first full account of its period, it will set the agenda for discussion of late twentieth-century literature for many years to come.

Full Product Details

Author:   Randall Stevenson (, Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature, University of Edinburgh)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Volume:   12
Dimensions:   Width: 13.70cm , Height: 3.20cm , Length: 21.70cm
Weight:   0.926kg
ISBN:  

9780199288359

ISBN 10:   0199288356
Pages:   644
Publication Date:   10 November 2005
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Last Things First I. Histories 1: 'Gleaming Twilight': Literature, Culture, and Society 2: A Postmodern Age? Literature, Ideas, and Traditions 3: An Age of Theory? Critics, Readers, and Authors 4: A Golden Age? Readers, Authors, and the Book Trade II. Poetry 5: Movement or Revival: The late 1950s to the 1980s 6: Counter-movements and Modernist Memories: 1960 to the 1980s 7: Politics and Postmodernism: The Late 1970s to 2000 8: Rosebay Revived: Language, Form, and Audience for 'This Unpopular Art' III. Drama 9: A Public Art Form: The late 1950s to the 1970s 10: Last Year in Jerusalem: Politics and Performance after 1968 11: 'Real Revolutionaries': Politics and the Margins 12: Absurdism, Postmodernism, Individualism 13: Discovering the Body 14: Revolution, Television, Subsidy IV. Narrative 15: To the Crossroads: Style and Society in the 1960s and 1970s 16: A Darker Route: Morality and History in the 1960s and 1970s 17: Longer Shadows and Darkness Risible: The 1970s to 2000 18: 'Double Lives': Women's Writing and Gender Difference 19: 'The Century of Strangers': Travellers and Migrants 20: Genres, Carnivals, and Conclusions Author Bibliographies Suggestions for Further Reading Preface I. Histories 1: 'Gleaming Twilight' - Literature, Culture, and Society 2: A Postmodern Age? - Literature, Ideas, and Traditions 3: An Age of Theory? - Critics, Readers, and Authors 4: A Golden Age? - Readers, Authors, and the Book Trade II. Poetry 5: Movement or Revival - the late 1950s to the 1980s 6: Movements and Counter-Movements - the 1960s to the 1980s 7: Politics and Postmodernism - the late 1970s to 2000 8: Rosebay Revived - Language, Form, and Audience for 'This Unpopular Art' III. Drama 9: A Public Art Form - the late 1950s to the 1970s 10: Last Year in Jerulsalem - Politics and Performance after 1968 11: 'Real Revolutionaries' - Politics and the Margins 12: Absurdism, Postmodernism, Individualism 13: Discovering the Body 14: Revolution, Television, Subsidy IV. Narrative 15: To the Crossroads - Style and Society in the 1960s and 1970s 16: A Darker Route - Moral and Historical Vision in the 1960s and 1970s 17: Longer Shadows and Darkness Risible - the 1970s to 2000 18: 'Double Lives' - Women's Writing and Gender Difference 19: 'The Century of Strangers' - Travellers and Migrants 20: Genres, Carnivals, and Conclusions Author Bibliographies Suggestions for Further Reading Works Cited Index

Reviews

Well researched, carefully considered and deeply felt.... Stevenson makes you sit up and take note. --Times Higher Education Supplement<br> This is an extraordinary book, both in its learning and its easy-going accessibility: an authoritative, yet truly companionable companion to modern English literature. --The Scotsman<br> If you want to get a sense of the larger patterns to be found in the kaleidoscope of recent and contemporary writing then this book is a very good place to start. --Stefan Collini, Guardian Review<br>

`One of the best portraits of any age I have ever read.' Owen Dudley Edwards, University of Edinburgh `Review from previous edition John Carey's recent review of Randall Stevenson's The Oxford Literary History in which Carey disparaged Stevenson's choice of Alain Robbe-Grillet as the model novelist of the mid-20th century, made me rush out to buy the Stevenson. All that talk of disjointed narratives, the reader as author, and writing that challenged whoever encountered it, made Stevenson sound like my kind of writer.' Bonnie Grear, Books and the Box, Guardian Weekend magazine `one of the most fascinating aspects of this wide-ranging and readable book is the sense it gives of how literature fits into the wider cultural landscape - and of just how far the reach of culture has extended in recent decades . . . Unabashedly forward-looking, this book doesn't shirk its duties as a reference companion: look up any reasonably well known name and you'll find somthing succinctly informative, and insightful.' Michael Kerrigan, The Scotsman `The Last of England? surveys the period of diverse poetry, drama and fiction with perceptive, self-effacing reasonableness.' Jeremy Noel-Tod, Saturday Telegraph `His chapter on social history and the book trade is excellent.' John Carey, The Sunday Times Books `Sensibly enough, he focuses on the English balancing act between tradition and experiment, awarding maximum points to the writers who have most successfully combined the two.' The Sunday Telegraph `wish I had written The Last of England? What a well-researched, carefully considered and deeply felt work it is. Stevenson can certainly coin phrases that linger in the mind. From the pithy what history refuses, culture provides to the poetic - that playwright Peter Shaffer's protagonists are sceptics still lusting for transcendence - Stevenson makes you sit up and take note.' Gary Day, Tribune `What a well researched, carefully considered and deeply felt work it is. There is a nugget on practically every page. Stevenson makes you sit up and take note.' THES `'very impressive survey of the history of the late 20th century English literature'' Kevin Davey, The Tribune `This is an extraordinary book, both in its learning and its easy-going accessibility: an authoritative, yet truly companionable companion to modern English literature.' The Scotsman `The Last of England? is serious, thoughtful and useful.' Stefan Collini, The Guardian Review `If you want to get a sense of the larger patterns to be found in the kaleidoscope of recent and contemporary writing then this book is a very good place to start.' Stefan Collini, The Guardian Review

For much of the period covered here the literature of England was dogged by an all-pervading sense of failure and decline. In Stevenson's analysis, a misplaced nostalgia impeded the progress of English drama, fiction and especially poetry. Philip Larkin mourned an England gone , and he cast a long shadow over English verse. English literature was never more static than under the influence of the Movement, says Stevenson. If the later 20th century proved a difficult period for poetry, it was in large measure because it took so long to realise this, and move on. Guardian English theatre fared better, raising issues of class (kitchen-sink drama) and sex, with Harold Pinter adding a dash of Beckettian absurdity; though its faltering progress is neatly summed up in the chapter title Revolution, Television, Subsidy . As for the English novel, everyone was busy predicting its demise in the 1960s, but it was still going strong at the end of the century, with Salman Rushdie giving it a new multicultural spin. If this wise and fascinating survey has a single message, it is not to confuse change with loss. Guardian

Author Information

Randall Stevenson is Reader in English Literature and Deputy Head of Department at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Modernist Fiction (1992; revd. edn, 1998); A Reader's Guide to the Twentieth-Century Novel in Britain (1993); The British Novel Since the Thirties (1986), and many articles on modernist and postmodernist fiction.

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