Rosenquist, R. (2015) A Transatlantic ‘Field of Stars’: redrawing the borders of English literature in the late nineteenth century. Critical Survey. 27(3) 0011-1570.
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Abstract:
This article examines a map of the English coast surrounding Romney Marsh in 1895, hand-drawn by Ford Madox Ford for his memoir, Return to Yesterday (1931). The map is read as a cultural reconstruction of the shifting terrain of fin-de-siècle literary reputation, representing late-Victorian English letters as a distinctly transatlantic realm. Ford’s illustration is analysed as an early incarnation of the celebrity ‘star map’: it positions authors in specific locations, while also tracing constellations of developing alliances, dividing the aesthetically minded foreigners from a defensive grouping of British institutional icons. Ford redraws the centre and the boundaries of English literature through his act of map-making, positioning his ‘alien’ literary celebrities – including transatlantic icons of the late nineteenth century, like Henry James, Stephen Crane and W.H. Hudson – along the Romney coast, a site associated with invasion, fluid boundaries, and shifting coastlines.
Uncontrolled Keywords:
Ford Madox Ford, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Stephen Crane, W.H. Hudson, literary celebrity, Victorian literature
Creators:
Rosenquist, R.
Faculties, Divisions and Institutes:
Date:
1 December 2015
Date Type:
Publication
Journal or Publication Title:
Critical Survey
Volume:
27
Number:
3
Language:
English
ISSN:
0011-1570
Status:
Published / Disseminated
Refereed:
Yes
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