Philip Tew is Professor of English (Post-1900 Literature) at Brunel University, UK, Director of the Brunel Centre for Contemporary Writing and Director of the UK Network for Modern Fiction Studies. His many publications as both author and editor include Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond (Bloomsbury, 2013) and (co-edited with Emily Horton and Leigh Wilson) The 1980s: A Decade of Modern British Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2014).Glyn White is Senior Lecturer in Twentieth Century Literature and Culture at the University of Salford, UK. His previous books include Reading the Graphic Surface: The Presence of the Book in Prose Fiction (2005.

• Series Editors’ Preface Contributors Acknowledgements Critical introduction: Reappraising the 1940s Philip Tew andGlyn White 1 Their finest hour?: A literary history of the 1940s Ashley Maher 2 British Blitz fiction of the 1940s: Another finest hour, myth orpropaganda? Philip Tew 3 Genteel Bohemia: Capable women in women’s fiction of the 1940sDeborah Philips 4 The ship and the nation: Royal Navy novels and the people’swar 1939–45 Chris Hopkins 5 Feeling political: Elizabeth Bowen in the 1940s Karen Schaller 6 The life of animals: George Orwell’s fiction in the 1940sTamás Bényei7 Masters and servants, class, and the colonies in Graham Greene’s1940s fiction Rebecca Dyer 8 Purposes of love: Rethinking intimacy in the 1940sCharlotte Charteris 9 No concession to ‘English’ taste? Refugees from National Socialismwriting in Britain Andrea Hammel 10 Un-British: The transatlantic crime film connection Glyn WhiteTimeline of Works Timeline of UK events Timeline of international events Biographies of writers Index

This is an original and very timely contribution to the emergent field of mid-century studies. It offers extended new readings of such indisputably major figures as Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, and George Orwell at the same time as it undertakes some important recoveries of the period’s once-familiar names. This wide-ranging collection will be of interest to any reader hoping to understand better the rich and complex literature of twentieth-century Britain’s most powerfully consequential decade.