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Bloomsbury's Literature and Economics Alice Davis Keane “Full of Experiments and Reforms”: Bloomsbury’s Literature and Economics by Alice Davis Keane A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English Language and Literature) in the University of Michigan 2014 Doctoral Committee: Professor John A. Whittier-Ferguson, Chair Professor Gregg D. Crane Professor Geoff Eley Professor Alan M. Wald Associate Professor Andrea P. Zemgulys “We were full of experiments and reforms [….] Everything was going to be new, everything was going to be different. Everything was on trial.” -- Virginia Woolf, “Old Bloomsbury” (1922) © Alice Davis Keane 2014 Acknowledgements This project is dedicated to John Whittier-Ferguson with deepest gratitude. His mentorship and encouragement have been absolutely essential, both in the drafting and polishing of this dissertation, and in my concurrent development as a researcher, writer and teacher. John models in his own scholarship how to work with texts and ideas at the highest level of insight and precision, and this dissertation has benefited enormously from his detailed commentary on multiple drafts of every chapter. I have been simultaneously influenced by John’s enthusiasm for and dedication to pedagogy, and from his example I have learned that it is possible, and very much worth doing, to prioritize both. Gregg Crane, too, has been a key part of this project from the beginning. My very first conversation about Bloomsbury at the University of Michigan was with Gregg. His interdisciplinary perspective, his philosophical expertise and his focus on larger stakes and current implications have all proven essential to the development of this dissertation. Alan M. Wald’s powerful commitment to social justice and his deep and wide- ranging scholarship have inspired me greatly. His support of my work since my first year at the University of Michigan, and his commentary on draft dissertation chapters and at the defense, have significantly facilitated my progress. Beginning in my second semester, with her “Bloomsbury Omnibus” seminar in which we read Keynes’s polemical prose, Andrea Zemgulys’s insightful feedback and advice have contributed in many valuable ways to my research and writing. I very much appreciate Geoff Eley’s willingness to serve as my cognate ii committee member; his expertise on questions of German historiography and cultural studies has been immensely helpful. My ideas for this project have also been shaped in important ways by other faculty at the University of Michigan, especially Sara Blair, George Bornstein, Jonathan Freedman, Marjorie Levinson, and Joshua Miller. I am most grateful for their insights and tutelage. I have also been fortunate to benefit from thoughtful and enthusiastically motivating conference feedback offered by members of the International Virginia Woolf Society, especially Melba Cuddy-Keane, Jeanne Dubino, and Jane Goldman. My graduate student cohort – expansively defined to include earlier and later years, plus cognate friends from Comparative Literature – has been wonderful. I would like to express special thanks to those who asked to read drafts of parts of this project: Carolyn Dekker, Khaliah Mangrum, Adam Mazel, Rebecca Ariel Porte, and Shannon K. Winston. I am especially grateful to Jennifer Sorensen Emery-Peck for her generous mentorship since my first year at Michigan. I would also like to express my appreciation to the extraordinarily helpful and knowledgeable staff of the English Department at the University of Michigan, especially Jan Burgess, Lisa Curtis, Linda Deitert, and Senia Vasquez. For access and guidance to archival materials, I would like to thank the archivists at the British Library; at City University London, for access to the Nation and Athenaeum files; at the University of Reading, for access to the archives of the Hogarth Press; and the King’s College Archive Centre at King’s College, Cambridge, for access to the John Maynard Keynes and E. M. Forster papers. The University of Michigan’s Rackham Graduate School has generously funded both archival research and fellowship support that were invaluable in improving and enriching this dissertation. iii Last but not least, I owe a great debt to the inspiration, education and support provided by my late parents, Edythe Davis Keane and Thomas Barnard Keane. And to old friends the most – I cannot imagine attempting this wonderful scholarly adventure without them, and I am very glad I did. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... ii Introduction: Modeling Modernism in Bloomsbury ................................................................ 1 Chapter One Economic Complexity and Linguistic Vagueness: Keynes as a Bloomsbury Modernist .. 10 I. Keynes on Uncertainty and Irrationality: From A Treatise on Probability to The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money ......................................... 12 II. Freudianism and Modern Economics: Irrationality and “Animal Spirits” In the General Theory ................................................................................................. 21 III. Economic Complexity and Linguistic Vagueness in the General Theory .......... 31 IV. “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren”: Keynes’s Utopian Aspect ........................................................................................................................ 38 V. Keynes as a Bloomsbury Modernist ..................................................................... 43 Chapter Two Virginia Woolf and the Impossibility of Economic Modeling .............................................. 49 I. Domestic Economy and the Language of Its Discontents: A Room of One’s Own and Night and Day .................................................................................. 54 II. Outmoded Coinages? The Years and Three Guineas .............................................. 69 III. The Impossibility of Economic Modeling ........................................................... 89 Chapter Three “Upon Money as Upon Islands”: E. M. Forster and the Cultural Economics of Liberalism ...................................................................................................................................... 94 I. Howards End and The General Theory: Modeling Bloomsbury’s Liberalism and Economics ......................................................................................................... 96 II. “[T]he coin that buys the exact truth has not yet been minted”: A Passage to India and the Cultural Economics of Imperialism ....................................... 111 III. “[W]ords have two functions”: Rhetoric and Economics in Forster’s v Nonfiction .............................................................................................................. 122 Chapter Four Keynes, Bloomsbury’s Print Culture, and the Problem of German Reparations ........... 132 I. Editing The Nation: “Anon” and Bloomsbury’s Economies of Influence ................................................................................................................. 135 II. Revis(it)ing the Versailles Treaty: Harcourt, Macmillan, and The Nation and Athenaeum ......................................................................................................... 140 III. Circulating Questions: Keynes and Weimar Germany ................................... 156 IV. “Early Beliefs” Undone: Keynes, Leonard Woolf, and Post-Weimar Germany ................................................................................................................. 167 Chapter Five Leonard Woolf and Ceylon: Modeling Anti-Imperialism ................................................... 176 I. Diaries in Ceylon and The Village in the Jungle: Modeling an “Old Bloomsbury” Critique of Economic Imperialism ........................................... 178 II. Limiting Perceptions: Leonard Woolf, Keynes, and British Colonial Structures ............................................................................................................... 190 III. Versions of Anti-Imperialism: Leonard Woolf, the Hogarth Press, and Ceylon ..................................................................................................................... 203 Conclusion: Bloomsbury and Contemporary Contexts ...................................................... 215 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 221 vi Introduction: Modeling Modernism in Bloomsbury Much of Bloomsbury’s fiction takes economics as a central concern – for example, Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day and The Years, as well as E. M. Forster’s Howards End and A Passage to India, and Leonard Woolf’s early anti-imperialist novel The Village in the Jungle. This interest in economics is even more characteristic of Bloomsbury’s essays and polemics, including Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas. Mutually influencing each other in the multidisciplinary context of Bloomsbury, Keynes and Virginia Woolf – as well as Leonard Woolf and E. M. Forster – all, in varying ways, conceive of economic goals not as ends in themselves but as a basis for the production of art and the achievement of the good life. They work toward these aims by using a method of inquiry that, because it acknowledges uncertainty, is experimental and iterative,1 yet more accurate
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