Forces In Modern British Literature 1885-1946

Forces in Modern British Literature 18851946 WILLIAM YORK TINDALL ALFRED A. KNOPF NEW YORK Copyright 1947 by William Tori Tindall. All rights reserved Jfo part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing Jrom tht publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Manufactured in tht United States of America. Published in Canada by McCUllandV Steward Limited. Published May 15, 1947 Second Printing, September 1947 Third Printing, November 1949 To ERNEST HUNTER WRIGHT PREFACE ONTEMPORARY literature, says T. S. Eliot, tends to be degrading, However this may be, contemporary British literature is important, better at its best than Victorian lit erature, which tends so little to be degrading. No Victo rian novelist is as good as Joyce, and no Victorian poet as good as Yeats. This book, an exploration of contemporary British lit erature, is intended for the reader who knows something about it and wants to know more. Selection was necessary, but I have included many minor writers who are interest ing for one reason or another. The arrangement is planned to show the character of contemporary literature as a whole and to emphasize books rather than authors. The year 1885 seemed a good beginning because at that time naturalism and symbolism began to shape British litera ture around that time Yeats, Shaw, and Moore com menced their work, and Hopkins was in full career and shortly before that time Joyce and Virginia Woolf were born. Since almost everything in the literature of the 1940 s is implicit in the literature of the 1880s, I have treated the intervening period as a unit Developments within itscomplexity determine my chapters. Their pat terns are various, at their simplest chronological, suggest ing causes and effects but such patterns are conveniences. My concern has been with meanings and values. The labyrinth of contemporary British literature is part of a greater design that involves the literatures of America and the Continent It is foolish to isolate part of this whole, yet impossible in a book of this size to do justice to the whole. By way of compromise I have tried, while con sidering the part, to preserve a sense of the whole by Preface tions I thank Edward LeComte, Jean Spanieling, and Ruth Temple. My students, who teach me more tluin I teach them, have been generous with their aid, especially Bos by Brotman, Edward Easton, Elizabeth Isaacs, Allen Mandelhaum, Irving Massey, Thomas Morton, Rosemary Neiswender, Julia Peebles, Morton Sciden Grover Smith, Lavita Weissman, A, M. Williams, Arthur Zciger, and all those who, sitting around tables, explicated texts. For reading what I wrote and for offering suggestions which, I am glad to say, I took I owe a great debt to William Bridgwater, Milton Rugoff, Herbert Weinstock, and Ce cilia, my wife. Columbia Vnhxnity V. Y. October 15 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to Dodd, Mead Company for permission to quote from The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles by Bernard Shaw, copyright, 1936, by Bernard Shaw to Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., for permission to quote from Mrs. Dalto way. To the Lighthouse, and The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf to Henry Holt and Company, Inc., for a passage re printed from The Listeners included in Collected Poems by Walter de la Mare, copyright, 1920, by Henry Holt and Com pany to Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., for permission to quote from Loofc at All Those Roses by Elizabeth Bowen, from The Plumed Serpent by D. H. Lawrence, and from Collected Poems by Henry Treece to Brandt Brandt for permission to quote from Max Beerbohms Srcrn Men, published by Alfred A. Knopf. Inc., copyright, 1920, by Max Beerbohm to The Macmillan Company for permission to quote from The Dy nasts by Thomas I lardy and from Autobiography, Essays, and Collected Poems by W. B...