Railways and Culture in Britain

The Epitome of Modernity

Ian Carter, Jeffrey Richards, Rebecca Mortimer

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English

Manchester University Press
01 September 2001

Literary studies: general; History: specific events & topics; Cultural studies; Railway technology, engineering & trades

Series: Studies in Popular Culture

The 19th-century's steam railway epitomized modernity's relentlessly onrushing advance. In this work Ian Carter delves into the cultural impact of train technology, and how this was represented in British society. Why for example did Britain possess no great railway novel? The work's first half tests that assertion by comparing fiction and images by some canonical British figures (Turner, Dickens, Arnold Bennett) against selected French and Russian competitors: Tolstoy, Zola, Monet, Manet. The second half proposes that if high cultural work on the British steam railway is thin, then this does not mean that all British culture ignored this revolutionary artefact. Detailed discussions of comic fiction, crime fiction and cartoons reveal a popular fascination with railways tumbling from vast (and hitherto unexplored) stores of critically overlooked genres. A final chapter contemplates cultural correlations of the steam railway's eclipse. If this was the epitome of modernity, then does the triumph of diesel and electric trains, of cars and planes, signal a decisive shift to postmodernity?

By: Ian Carter
Series edited by: Jeffrey Richards
Other: Rebecca Mortimer
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 499g
ISBN: 9780719059667
ISBN 10: 0719059666
Series: Studies in Popular Culture
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 01 September 2001
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , A / AS level
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Ian Carter is Professor of Sociology at University of Auckland