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Modernism, Middlebrow and the Literary Canon

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Modernism, Middlebrow and the Literary Canon MODERNISM, MIDDLEBROW AND THE LITERARY CANON IN THE MODERN LIBRARY SERIES, 1917-1955 by LISE M. JAILLANT Diplôme, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, 2004 MA, Birkbeck (University of London), 2009 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF Doctor of Philosophy in The Faculty of Graduate Studies (English) The University of British Columbia (Vancouver) June 2013 © Lise M. Jaillant, 2013 Abstract Modernism, Middlebrow and the Literary Canon examines the evolution of cultural categories in mid-twentieth-century America through the study of the Modern Library, a cheap reprint series created in 1917. While the Modern Library has been described as a series of “highbrow” works that gradually became more commercial, my dissertation shows that it had always published a wide range of texts. I argue that the diversity of the Modern Library exemplifies the flexibility of cultural categories in the interwar period – a flexibility that was lost in the 1940s and 1950s when critics called for the separation between “high” and “low” cultural forms. I see the Modern Library as a large-scale institution of modernism that participated in the definition of the literary canon, and contributed to the popularization of writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner. In Chapter 1, I situate my methodology in relation to the various approaches employed by book historians, from biographical studies to quantitative analyses. Chapter 2 focuses on the inclusion of scientific essays and H. G. Wells’s controversial novels Ann Veronica and Tono- Bungay – a selection that contributed to the image of the Modern Library as a daring series for the civilized minority. Chapter 3 contends that the series participated in the early canonization of Sherwood Anderson by marketing Winesburg, Ohio and Poor White to a wide audience of instructors and students. Chapter 4 studies the publication of Fourteen Great Detective Stories and Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in the Modern Library. The fact that these two books were marketed and advertised in the same way exemplifies the blurring of the boundary between “highbrow” and “popular” texts in the interwar period. Chapter 5 looks at the Modern Library edition of Mrs. Dalloway. Despite her opposition to the “middlebrow,” Woolf accepted to write the introduction to widen her readership in North America. Chapter 6 examines ii the preface that Faulkner wrote for the Modern Library edition of Sanctuary. It shows that this introduction became controversial only in the late 1930s, when critics started dividing “high” culture from “lesser” works. iii Preface This dissertation is original, unpublished, independent work by the author, Lise M. Jaillant. iv Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................. ii Preface .................................................................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................. v List of Illustrations .............................................................................................................................. vi List of Abbreviations .......................................................................................................................... vii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................ viii Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 1 Context ............................................................................................................................................... 8 Outline .............................................................................................................................................. 24 Chapter 1 - A Mixed Methodology for the Study of Publishing Enterprises ............................... 26 Chapter 2 - H. G. Wells, Science and Sex in the Modern Library, 1917-1931 ............................. 53 Moral Absolutism versus Modern Thought ..................................................................................... 56 Ann Veronica & Evolution in Modern Thought ............................................................................... 60 1931: The Sex Problem and Tono-Bungay ....................................................................................... 75 Chapter 3 – “The Modern Library is something magnificent”: Sherwood Anderson and the Canon of American Literature .......................................................................................................... 87 From Struggling Writer to Literary Sensation ................................................................................. 89 From Literary Sensation to Canonical Writer ................................................................................ 102 Post-1941: Anderson’s Place in the Literary Canon ...................................................................... 113 Chapter 4 - Blurring the Boundaries: Detective Fiction and Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in the Modern Library ................................................................................................ 121 Marketing ....................................................................................................................................... 123 Reviewing ....................................................................................................................................... 137 Dividing .......................................................................................................................................... 142 Chapter 5 - Woolf in the Modern Library: Bridging the Gap between Academics and Common Readers .............................................................................................................................................. 151 1928: Bridging the Gap between Common Readers and Academics ............................................ 153 Virginia Woolf, a “Democratic Highbrow”? ................................................................................. 165 After the War: Widening the Gap between Academics and Professional Readers ........................ 178 Chapter 6 - “If it’s like any introduction you ever read, I'll eat the jacket”: Faulkner’s Sanctuary, the Modern Library and the Literary Canon ............................................................. 184 1932: Sanctuary in the Modern Library ......................................................................................... 185 1936: Absalom, Absalom! .............................................................................................................. 189 1938-1942: Breaking the Resistance to Faulkner’s Style .............................................................. 194 Faulkner Revival of the Late 1940s ............................................................................................... 197 Sanctuary and the Literary Canon .................................................................................................. 202 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 217 Works Cited ...................................................................................................................................... 225 v List of Illustrations Figure 1-1: Mapping Methodologies ............................................................................................................................ 30 Figure 2-1: Everyman's Library Headings, 1906 .......................................................................................................... 54 Figure 2-2: Modern Library Binding, 1917-1918 ......................................................................................................... 61 Figure 2-3: Advertisement for the Modern Library, New York Tribune 20 Dec. 1920: 11 ......................................... 68 Figure 2-4: “Exotics, Not Classics, for Tired Business Men” ...................................................................................... 69 Figure 2-5: Advertisement for the Modern Library, New York Times 10 April 1932: BR13 ...................................... 76 Figure 3-1: Advertisement for the Modern Library, New York Herald Tribune Books 7 Nov. 1926 .......................... 99 Figure 3-2: Dust Jackets, Modern Library ed. of Winesburg, Ohio (Left: c. 1930; Right: Design by E. M. Kauffer, c. 1936) .................................................................................................................................................................. 101 Figure 3-3: Printing Figures, Modern Library ed. of Winesburg, Ohio, 1926-45 ....................................................... 118 Figure 3-4: MLA Bibliography Entries for Selected Writers of the Chicago Renaissance (1940-2009) ................... 119 Figure 3-5: MLA Bibliography Entries for Selected Writers of the Chicago Renaissance (1942-2011) ................... 119 Figure 4-1: Dust Jackets, Modern Library ed. of Fourteen Great Detective Stories and A Portrait of
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