Railways and Culture in Britain: The Epitome of Modernity

Railways and Culture in Britain: The Epitome of Modernity
ISBN-10
0719059666
ISBN-13
9780719059667
Category
History
Pages
338
Language
English
Published
2001
Publisher
Manchester University Press
Author
Ian Carter

Description

The 19th-century steam railway epitomized modernity's relentlessly onrushing advance. Ian Carter delves into the cultural impact of the train. Why, for example, did Britain possess no great railway novel? He compares fiction and images by canonical British figures (Turner, Dickens, Arnold Bennett) with selected French and Russian competitors: Tolstoy, Zola, Monet, Manet. He argues that while high cultural work on the British steam railway is thin, British popular culture did not ignore it. Detailed discussions of comic fiction, crime fiction, and cartoons reveal a popular fascination with railways tumbling from vast (and hitherto unexplored) stores of critically overlooked genres.

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