Railways and Culture in Britain: The Epitome of Modernity

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title Railways and Culture in Britain: The Epitome of Modernity
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Ian Carter
SeriesStudies in Popular Culture
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:352
Dimensions(mm): Height 234,Width 156
Category/GenreLiterary studies - general
History of specific subjects
ISBN/Barcode 9780719059667
ClassificationsDewey:809.93356
Audience
General
Undergraduate
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Professional & Vocational
Illustrations Illustrations, black & white

Publishing Details

Publisher Manchester University Press
Imprint Manchester University Press
Publication Date 1 September 2001
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

The 19th-century's steam railway epitomized modernity's relentlessly onrushing advance. In this work Ian Carter delves into the cultural impact of train technology, and how this was represented in British society. Why for example did Britain possess no great railway novel? The work's first half tests that assertion by comparing fiction and images by some canonical British figures (Turner, Dickens, Arnold Bennett) against selected French and Russian competitors: Tolstoy, Zola, Monet, Manet. The second half proposes that if high cultural work on the British steam railway is thin, then this does not mean that all British culture ignored this revolutionary artefact. 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. A final chapter contemplates cultural correlations of the steam railway's eclipse. If this was the epitome of modernity, then does the triumph of diesel and electric trains, of cars and planes, signal a decisive shift to postmodernity?

Author Biography

Ian Carter is Professor of Sociology at the University of Auckland

Reviews

"'This is an important, agenda-setting work. The quality of the scholarship is very high'. Dr Ralph Harrington, University of York"