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A bold new study of literary and photographic depictions of London in the 1930s

London Writing in the 1930s offers a new perspective on the decade that has long been associated with the Auden generation and the rise of documentary. It argues for the centrality of urban fiction and photography to the decade's experiments in representing daily life. Why the period's London-set novels were so often described as 'photographic', and what kind of photographs inspired such comparisons? Tracing representations of London by a wide range of 1930s writers and photographers, including Patrick Hamilton, Jean Rhys, George Orwell, and Bill Brandt, the book's chapters are organised around London's spaces of leisure. Teashops, cinemas, and the night clubs of Soho were central to 1930s negotiations of the interrelation between urban life, gender, and class; these settings provide this book both with cultural-historical context and with the basis for its argument about the decade's aesthetic orientations.

Key Features

• Positions London writing as central to British literature of the 1930s
• Argues that interrelationship between journalistic, photographic, and Naturalist models is key to the decade's literary aesthetic
• Offers critical readings of neglected and forgotten 1930s writers such as Betty Miller, Norah Hoult, Storm Jameson
• Combines literary analysis with research into the cultural histories of 1930s London's spaces of leisure