Literary Modernism Series

A decade ago John Gross noted that, "as a literary term, 'modernism' is open to some large objections. Everything was modern once. Everything ceases to be modern sooner or later.... None the less the idea of 'the Modern' remains one of the most potent in twentieth-century literature."

The Literary Modernism Series publishes studies that focus on this dominant movement in literature and the arts during the first half of the twentieth century. Hardly static, our conception of the movement is constantly undergoing change and re-evaluation in a critical dialogue that interrogates the impact of modernism and its influence on twentieth-century culture and ideas. Whatever its standing in the recent critical wars, from its emergence as what Henry James called an "imagination of disaster," modernism has defied easy definition. From James and Eliot to Richards and Leavis, to Trilling and Kermode, critics have tried to give definition and shape to this fascinating body of art and literature.

The Series aims to publish some of the best scholarship on the subject. It has published studies of the major figures of the movement such as Joyce, Pound, and Faulkner, along with broader subjects such as The Sitwells and the Arts of the 1920s and 1930s. The Series extends as well to later writers of the century, publishing titles on Nabokov, Singer, and Stoppard.

The editor welcomes suggestions or submissions of works which fall generally within the broad scope described.

The Literary Modernism Series is under the editorial direction of Thomas F. Staley, of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

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