The English Novel at Mid-Century : From the Leaning Tower

So far as the young were concerned, Orwell wrote of Britain in the years after the Great War, the official beliefs were dissolving like sandcastles. Most critical accounts of that postwar generation have been constrained by having to deal with the myth of the thirties. Michael Gorras innovation in this exciting study of the postwar generations major novelists lies in seeing the consequences of that dissolution in formal rather than political terms, arguing that the novelists difficulty in representing human character in what Wyndham Lewis called a shell-shocked age is itself a sign of that loss of belief. But while most studies of this generation end with the coming of World War 2, Gorra follows these novelists throughout their careers. The result is a book that not only shows how the British novels increasing consciousness of its own limitations stands as a mirror to the countrys loss of power, but also provides memorable portraits of four major twentieth century writers.