Cross-Currents: Elizabeth von Arnim, Max Beerbohm and George Bernard Shaw
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Authors
Maddison, Isobel
Publication Date
2017-04-03Journal Title
Women: A Cultural Review
ISSN
0957-4042
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Volume
28
Issue
1-2
Pages
130-143
Language
en
Type
Article
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Maddison, I. (2017). Cross-Currents: Elizabeth von Arnim, Max Beerbohm and George Bernard Shaw. Women: A Cultural Review, 28 (1-2), 130-143. https://doi.org/10.1080/09574042.2017.1320071
Abstract
When Elizabeth von Arnim's novel 'Introduction to Sally' appeared in 1926, the critical response was divided. Dame Ethel Smyth may have told von Arnim the book was her 'masterpiece' but some were less convinced; the reviewer in 'Punch' for instance, considered it a 'coarse-grained fantasy'. By situating 'Introduction to Sally' in a wider literary context that includes Max Beerbohm's 'Zuleika Dobson' (1911) and George Bernard Shaw's 'Pygmalion' (1914), this article explores the personal connections between these three authors and the thematic cross-currents in these texts. Is von Arnim's novel really as 'coarse' & 'vulgar' as some earlier critics suggest? Or is it a novel that successfully mixes the plausible with the artificial, the comic and the socially catastrophic, in ways that, more than a decade later, resonate with the work of her friends to highlight several continuing preoccupations?
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09574042.2017.1320071
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/284627
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