I want this book. Or more appropriately, I am lusting after this book (and the books below, too). It is called Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper by Alexandra Harris, and it is a "reassessment of English cultural life in the thirties and forties."
"In the 1930s and 1940s, artists and writers explored what it meant to be alive at that moment and in England. Eclectically, passionately, wittily, they showed that 'the modern' need not be at war with the past."
Harris takes as her examples the likes of Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, E.M. Forster, Bill Brandt and Cecil Beaton among others. I think this is going to be an interesting perspective on 20th century modernism. I hadn't thought of this "British" aspect of modernism--something that's isn't all clear, sharp lines. There's a great write up in the Guardian and they note,
"Whereas high modernism wanted to lay waste to the material past in order to re-fashion it upon rational lines, romantic modernists had a soft spot for what had gone before."
And the book is beautifully illustrated. This is a detail of a painting called A Village in Heaven by Stanley Spencer. It's a lovely book and I wish it were mine, but alas it is my library's. I rescued the dust jacket--we take them off when they go to the shelves, but when it goes back it will be stripped once again. More about this one when I've had a chance to really start reading.
This is what my library's books look like normally--sans dust jacket. I've been limiting my library borrowing, but I had to bring these home as well: Deborah Mitford's Wait for Me and In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor. One of my planned projects (maybe next year?!) is to read books about and by the Mitford sisters. I only know a little but find them fascinating. I should probably start with a more general biography, but why not read about the Duchess of Devonshire first? She is the youngest of the sisters, and her autobiography was just released to good reviews. Deborah has been a lifelong and very close friend with Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose work you might recall I really like. A nice combination of reads, don't you think and the latter two make a nice pair. If I could afford them I would buy the lot to keep, but as it is I am lucky that I should be able to keep these over my winter break later this month. Dangerous to start planning my reads so soon, but it's something to look foward to.
And in keeping with this 1930s-40s British theme I've got Henrietta's War by Joyce Dennys lined up next. The books I've been reading lately have been on the darkish side, combine that with a slightly crabby mood of late and I've decided I need something cheerful and maybe a little humorous to read. My first thought was to pick up a Georgette Heyer novel, but then I saw this on my pile--a nice slim little novel complete with illustrations. It's even in epistolary form, and while it is set during WWII I get the impression it is along the lines of the wonderful Diary of a Provincial Lady and how can you beat that for cheery?