Work of Words

Literature, Craft, and the Labour of Mind in Britain, 1830–1940

Häftad, Engelska, 2024

Av Marcus Waithe, University of Cambridge) Waithe, Marcus (University Senior Lecturer and Fellow in English, Magdalene College

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Rather than focus on the well-known ‘dignity of literature’ debate, whereby authors such as Dickens sought to establish authorship as a middle-class profession, The Work of Words considers the alternative path of middle-class writers who re-presented literature as a manual craft. Unlike many works in the field, it extends beyond the mid-Victorian novel as a generic and historical focus, to address its aesthetic and political afterlife right up to the periods of Guild Socialism, modernism and European fascism. Given the tilt of world trade towards China, and more recent supply chain shocks, it is not just writers who are haunted by a lost world of material production, but much of the de-industrialised West. By studying the Victorian attempt to make composition (and related mental processes) palpable, this book takes the long view on questions that still trouble us, and responds to recent concerns, whether as manifested through the revival of craft and workshop culture, or debates about the visibility, weight and worth of the humanities.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2024-11-30
Mått156 x 234 x 17 mm
Vikt449 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor320
FörlagEdinburgh University Press
ISBN9781399512305

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Marcus Waithe is University Senior Lecturer; and Fellow in English, Magdalene College, University of Cambridge. His published books include Thinking through Style: Non-Fiction Prose of the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. with Michael Hurley (OUP, 2018), The Labour of Literature in Britain and France: Authorial Work Ethics, ed. with Claire White (Palgrave, 2018) and William Morris’s Utopia of Strangers: Victorian Medievalism and the Ideal of Hospitality (D.S. Brewer, 2006).

PrefaceIntroductionI. ANXIOUS VOCATIONSChapter 1. Carlyle’s ‘Author Craft’i. Books and Buildingsii. Carlyle’s ‘Craftmanship' iii. The Pen and the HammerChapter 2. Ford Madox Brown Among the Brain-Workersi. Seeming Idlenessii. Idle Observersiii. Disciplines of a DiaristII. WRITERS AT WORKChapter 3. Barrett Browning’s Poetic Vocationi. ‘Song is work’: Barrett Browning’s Poetic Labourii. ‘The writer bodily’: Women and Workiii. Letters, Invalidism, and Poetic LabourChapter 4. Participant Observers: Gladstone, Ruskin, and Morrisi. Gladstone’s Odyssean Toolshopii. John Ruskin, Professor of Diggingiii. Morris’s Song-CraftIII. CRAFT CONSCIOUSNESSChapter 5. Songs of the Forgei. Harmonious Blacksmithsii. Nail-bearers: Ruskin’s Fors Clavigeraiii. Hopkins’s Poetic AnvilChapter 6. Modernism and the Maker i. ‘My mind strikes work’: Olive Schreiner and the Ecstatic Wordii. Gill’s Letter-Craftiii. Rusty Chisels: Pound, Prejudice, and Poetic ApprenticeshipConclusion: Writing as Working