The Birmingham Group: Reading the Second City in the 1930s (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9783031143823)

The focus of this study is the collective of writers known variously as the Birmingham Group, the Birmingham School or the Birmingham Proletarian Writers who were active in the City of Birmingham in the decade prior to the Second World War. Their narratives chronicle the lived-experience of their fellow citizens in the urban manufacturing centre which had by this time become Britain's second city. Presumed 'guilty by association' with a working-class literature considered overtly propagandistic, formally conservative, or merely the naive emulation of bourgeois realism, their narratives have in consequence suffered undue critical neglect. This book repudiates such assertions by arguing that their works not only contrast markedly with other examples of working-class writing produced in the 1930s but also prove themselves responsive to recent critical assessments seeking a more holistic and intersectional approach to issues of working-class identity.

Author: Robin Harriott
ISBN-10: 3031143825
ISBN-13: 9783031143823
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Language: English
Published: 10/15/2022
Pages: 290
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.14lbs
Size: 8.27h x 5.83w x 0.75d