9th Apr, 2019

The Popular Front Novel in Britain 1934-1940

Elinor Taylor

• $28 / £24.99 • 9781608460465 • 224 Pages

Historical Materialism, new in paperback catalogue: https://we.tl/t-DNvshoI187

This book explores the cultural formation of the anti-fascist Popular Front strategy in Britain and proposes a new framework for reading British fiction of this period.

In The Popular Front Novel in Britain, 1934–1940, Elinor Taylor provides the first study of the relationship between the British novel and the anti-fascist Popular Front strategy endorsed by the Comintern in 1935. Through readings of novels by British Communists including Jack Lindsay, John Sommerfield, Lewis Jones, and James Barke, Taylor shows that the realist novel of the left was a key site in which the politics of anti-fascist alliance were rehearsed. Maintaining a dialogue with theories of populism and with Georg Lukács’s vision of a revived literary realism ensuing from the Popular Front, this book at once illuminates the cultural formation of the Popular Front in Britain and proposes a new framework for reading British fiction of this period.

Customers in North America can order the book direct from Haymarket’s website at a 30% discount, with free postage: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1201-the-popular-front-novel-in-britain-1934-1940

We encourage customers elsewhere to order through independent bookstores where possible, particularly the Alliance of Radical Booksellers in the UK: http://www.radicalbooksellers.co.uk/  

Elinor Taylor, PhD (2014), University of Salford, is currently a lecturer in the Department of English, Linguistics, and Cultural Studies at the University of Westminster. She is the author of several articles on Communist writers.

For publicity requests or any other queries, contact uk@haymarketbooks.org (Europe) or john@haymarketbooks.org (US, rest of world).