Journey Through Despair, 1880-1914

By John Ashby Lester

Book Overview

English literary culture from the death of Thomas Carlyle to the First World War was paradoxical and diverse. In literature it was a time of confusion and a nervous, often frenzied, search for new terms on which the imagination could live. Professor Lester shows that the literary culture of the period moved steadily from a suspicion that the old bases of significant imaginative life were indefensible to a widespread conviction that they had collapsed. His book is not an exercise in literary criticism. Rather, it is an attempt to discover the "geist" of an age, to provide a synthesis for the years 1880-1914. His overriding concern is: "What is the primary force which so unsettles, disperses, and disorients the imaginative experience of this period?"

Originally published in 1968.

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691622418
• ISBN13: 9780691622415
• Release Date: December 2015
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 236 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 8.0"