A Sinking Island: The Modern English Writers - Hardcover

Kenner, Hugh

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394542541 ISBN 13: 9780394542546

Publisher: Knopf, 1988

Synopsis

A study of the main figures on the literary scene in twentieth-century England, including Hardy, James, Bloomsbury, Shaw, and Empson

About this title

From Library Journal:

This study of 20th-century English writers carries forward Kenner's seemingly inexhaustible discussion of literary modernism. Besides Conrad, Wells, Lawrence, Eliot, and Woolf, he takes up a host of lesser figures; studies social and historical contexts (the Great War, new reading publics); and talks about painting, popular literature, and criticism. Virtually every page of the book dances with a characteristic mix of fact, anecdote, and analysis. And Kenner's unconventional judgments are wonderfully provocative: Woolf and Larkin are savaged while Bunting and Tomlinson earn high praise. For breadth and readability, few critics come close to Kenner. Essential.Michael Hennessy, John Carroll Univ., Cleveland, Ohio
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review:

"Perhaps there will always be an England, but 'there's no longer an English literature' according to the literary critic Hugh Kenner. His latest book, A Sinking Island: The Modern English Writers seeks to show that hostility toward the phenomenon known as literary modernism was fatal to British intellectual life... A Sinking Island has many stylish, absorbing stories to tell. Mr. kenner's work demonstrates that the key to saving a narrative from tipping over into incomprehensibility is a constant, careful attention to 'milieux and contexts.' He provides these so exuberantly in his valediction to English literature that he will make you forget you are attending a funeral." -- The Wall Street Journal, April 6, 1988

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0394542541
• ISBN 13: 9780394542546
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 290