Best of
British-Literature

1924

The Crowded Street


Winifred Holtby - 1924
    Muriel, who believes that ‘men do as they like’ whereas women ‘wait to see what they will do’, lives in a town in Yorkshire waiting – for what? She tries to conform to the values of her snobbish, socially ambitious mother; she tries to be ‘attractive’ to men.Throughout the description of life in small-town ‘Marshington’, Winifred Holtby expressed her conviction that young women should be allowed to live away from home, to work, to develop as personalities away from their families, to shake off the ties that many mothers seemed to think it was their prerogative to impose on their daughters.

Youth / Heart of Darkness / The End of the Tether


Joseph Conrad - 1924
    . . before all, to make you see"Heart of Darkness, his exploration of European colonialism in Africa and of elusive human values, embodies more profoundly than almost any other modern fiction the difficulty of 'seeing,' its relativity and shifting compromise. Portraying a young man's first sea-voyage to the East in Youth, an unenlightened maturity in Heart of Darkness, and the blind old age of Captain Whalley in The End of the Tether, the stories in this volume are united in their theme - the 'Ages of Man' - and in their scepticism. Conrad's vision has influenced twentieth-century writers and artists from T. S. Eliot to Jorge Luis Borges and Werner Herzog, and continues to draw critical fire. In his stimulating introduction John Lyon discusses the links between these three stories, the critiques of Chinua Achebe and Edward Said, and the ebb and flow of Conrad's magnificent narrative art.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Call


Edith Ayrton Zangwill - 1924
    Although it has been ignored for nearly a hundred years, it is an important, and extremely readable, book. Edith Zangwill (1874–1945) - her husband was the writer Israel Zangwill - bases the detailed descriptions of Ursula’s working life on the life of Edith Zangwill’s stepmother, Hertha Ayrton (1854–1923), a physicist who became an expert on the electric arc. Yet, as Elizabeth Day writes: ‘The Call gives a rare insight into a woman’s domestic life in the first two decades of the 20th century ... domestic details about running a house are, most unusually, given their due alongside Ursula’s political actions, elegantly making the point that a woman’s work behind closed doors is just as worthy of our attention as what goes on in the wider world.’ By making political points in the guise of a ‘woman’s novel’, the author stunningly reveals her commitment to feminism.’

Homage to John Dryden


T.S. Eliot - 1924
    Three essays on 17th century literature, with particular emphasis on Dryden's poetry and criticism.THIS TITLE IS CITED AND RECOMMENDED BY: Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature; Catalogue of the Lamont Library, Harvard College.