Repository logo
 

Cross-Currents: Elizabeth von Arnim, Max Beerbohm and George Bernard Shaw

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

No Thumbnail Available

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Maddison, Isobel 

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?

Description

Keywords

47 Language, Communication and Culture, 4705 Literary Studies

Journal Title

Women: A Cultural Review

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0957-4042
1470-1367

Volume Title

28

Publisher

Informa UK Limited