Comedy and the Feminine Middlebrow Novel

Elizabeth von Arnim and Elizabeth Taylor

Erica Brown author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Published:1st Dec '12

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

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Comedy and the Feminine Middlebrow Novel cover

Elizabeth von Arnim and Elizabeth Taylor wrote witty and entertaining novels about the domestic lives of middle-class women. Widely read and enjoyed, their work was often dismissed as middlebrow. Brown argues their skilful use of comedy and irony provided the receptive reader with subversive commentary on the cruelties and disappointments of life.

'Brown's analysis of the comedic construction at work in the novels of von Arnim and Taylor is a welcome and authoritative addition to the debate about the designation of some writing as "middlebrow".' Women: A Cultural Review 'an entertaining piece of scholarship as well as a valuable one.' Times Literary Supplement 'This is an impressive scholarly work. Erica Brown's excellent new study spiritedly divests middlebrow writing of its pejorative associations and offers a lively and insightful analysis of Elizabeth Taylor and Elizabeth Von Arnim as ironists and humorists whose style, comedic technique and sophistication situate them squarely within traditions of women's writing associated with Jane Austen.' Mary Joannou, Anglia Ruskin University 'As elegant and incisive as the novels it discusses, Brown's book offers an entirely fresh reading of von Arnim and Taylor, and an authoritative account of the relationship between comedy and the middlebrow. A highly original and very engaging study.' Faye Hammill, University of Strathclyde

  • Short-listed for Essex Book Award 2014

ISBN: 9781848933385

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 385g

176 pages