The Criterion Cultural Politics and Periodical Networks in Inter-War Britain [Hardcover]

In this detailed study of literary culture in the inter-war period, Jason Harding examines the standing of T. S. Eliot's journal theCriterionin relation to other literary periodicals and, beyond that, to the larger cultural networks of the time. Through his examination of insufficiently known archive material and interviews with living witnesses to the period, Harding significantly alters our understanding of the journal and of Eliot's role as editor.

Abbreviations
Introduction
I: Periodical Networks
1. TheAdelphi: The Reaction against Romanticism
2. TheCalendar: Standards of Criticism
3.Scrutiny: Critics from Cambridge
4.New Verse: An Oxford Clique
II: The Politics of Book Reviewing
5. Herbert Read: Anarchist Aide-de-Camp
6. Bonamy Dobree: Agreeable Sceptic
7. Montgomery Belgion: A Useful Irritant
8. Michael Roberts and Janet Adam Smith: New Signatures
III: Cultural Politics
9. A Religio-Political Organ
10. Defence of the West
Afterword
Select Bibliography
Index

Harding's account of theCriterionproves a fascinating addition to the wealth of scholarship that has examined Eliot's role not only as a critic but also in the publishing world as an editor....TheCriterion:Cultural Politics and Periodical Networks in Inter-War Britain...offers a fascinating new entry into a wider debate concerning the practice of modernist scholarship. --Taryn L. Okuma, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Harding's assiduously researched study of [The Criterion] is excellent at nipping behind its tone of Olympian hauteur to reveal the sectarian, manipulative, suavely malicious politics of the literary marketplace that lie behind it. -- Terry Eagleton,London Review of Books

Harding has scoured the sources and offers a rich picture of the era's literary history.... A mastl#R