1st Edition

Comedy and the Feminine Middlebrow Novel Elizabeth von Arnim and Elizabeth Taylor

By Erica Brown Copyright 2013
    176 Pages
    by Routledge

    176 Pages
    by Routledge

    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.

    Acknowledgments; Introduction; Chapter 1 The Middlebrow and Comedy: Elizabeth Taylor and Elizabeth Von Arnim’s Cultural and Literary Context; Chapter 2 A Comedic ‘Response’ to War? Elizabeth Von Arnim’s Christopher and Columbus (1919) and Mr Skeffington (1940), and Elizabeth Taylor’s at Mrs Lippincote’s (1945); Chapter 3 ‘One Begins to See What is Meant by “They Lived Happily Ever after”’: Elizabeth Von Arnim’s Vera (1921) and Elizabeth Taylor’s Palladian (1946); Chapter 4 ‘One Shudders to Think What a Less Sophisticated Artist Would Have Made of It’: The Comedy of Age in Elizabeth Von Arnim’s Love (1925) and Elizabeth Taylor’s in a Summer Season (1961); Conclusion;

    Biography

    Erica Brown