Middlebrow Literary Cultures

JOHN BAXENDALE Visiting Fellow in the Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University, UK ADRIAN BINGHAM Senior Lecturer in Modern History, University of Sheffield, UK KRISTIN BLUEMEL Professor of English, Monmouth University, UK JANET GALLIGANI CASEY Professor of English, Skidmore College, New York, USA SHARON HAMILTON Academic Dean, The International University, Vienna, Austria NICOLA HUMBLE Professor of English, Roehampton University, UK NICK HUBBLE Senior Lecturer in English, Brunel University, UK VICTORIA KINGHAM Independent Scholar, UK CAROLINE POLLENTIER Doctoral Student, Paris Diderot University, France CANDIDA RIFKIND Assistant Professor, University of Winnipeg, Canada JOHN SHAPCOTT Honorary Research Fellow, Research Institute for Humanities, Keele University, UK JOAN SHELLEY RUBIN Professor of History, University of Rochester, USA JONATHAN WILD Lecturer in English Literature, University of Edinburgh, UK

The literary 'middle ground', once dismissed by academia as insignificant, is the site of powerful anxieties about cultural authority that continue to this day. In short, the middlebrow matters . These essays examine the prejudices and aspirations at work in the 'battle of the brows', and show that cultural value is always relative and situational.The literary 'middle ground', once dismissed by academia as insignificant, is the site of powerful anxieties about cultural authority that continue to this day. In short, the middlebrow matters . These essays examine the prejudices and aspirations at work in the 'battle of the brows', and show that cultural value is always relative and situational.