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List of contents
Series Editors' Preface
Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
Surfing the Sixties: A Critical Introduction
Philip Tew (Brunel University, UK), James Riley (University of Cambridge, UK) and Melanie Seddon (University of Portsmouth, UK)
1. Our Troubled Youth: A Literary History of the 1960s
Melanie Seddon (University of Portsmouth, UK)
2. The Housewife and the Single Girl as Archetypes in Satirical Novels of the 1960s
Joseph Darlington (University of Salford, UK)
3. British Women's Fiction of the 1960s
Tracey Hargreaves (University of Leeds, UK)
4. Certain Circles: Gay Fiction and Cultural Attitudes of the 1960s
Yvonne Salmon (University of Cambridge, UK)
5. Ways of Staying, Ways of Saying: From Black Writing in Britain to Black British Writing
Graham Riach (University of Cambridge, UK)
6. The 1960s Existential Fiction of John Fowles
Michelle Phillips Buchberger (Miami University, USA)
7. Experimental British Fiction of the Sixties: Five Meta-modern Novelists
Philip Tew (Brunel University London, UK)
8. Inner Space Odyssey: Suburban Spaceman and the Cults of Catastrophe
James Reich (Santa Fe University of Art and Design, USA)
9. Terminal Data: J.G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock and the Fiction of the Decade's End
James Riley (University of Cambridge, UK)
Timeline of Works
Timeline of National Events
Timeline of International Events
Biographies of Writers
Index
About the author
Philip Tew is Professor of English (Post-1900 Literature) at Brunel University, UK, Director of the Brunel Centre for Contemporary Writing and Director of the UK Network for Modern Fiction Studies. His many publications as both author and editor include Reading Zadie Smith: The First Decade and Beyond (Bloomsbury, 2013) and (co-edited with Emily Horton and Leigh Wilson) The 1980s: A Decade of Modern British Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2014).James Riley is Fellow and College Lecturer in English Literature at Girton College, University of Cambridge, UK.Melanie Seddon is an independent researcher specialising in British post-war literature and culture. She was formerly based at the Centre for Studies in Literature at the University of Portsmouth as a lecturer in twentieth-century literature.
Summary
How did social, cultural and political events in Britain during and leading up to the 1960s shape modern British fiction?
The 1960s were the “swinging decade”: a newly energised youth culture went hand-in-hand with new technologies, expanding educational opportunities, new social attitudes and profound political differences between the generations. This volume explores the ways in which these apparently seismic changes were reflected in British fiction of the decade. Chapters cover feminist writing that fused the personal and the political, gay, lesbian and immigrant voices and the work of visionary experimental and science fiction writers.
A major critical re-evaluation of the decade, this volume covers such writers as J.G. Ballard, Anthony Burgess, A.S. Byatt, Angela Carter, John Fowles, Christopher Isherwood, Doris Lessing, Michael Moorcock and V.S. Naipaul.
Foreword
A wide-ranging critical survey of British fiction of the 1960s, from J.G. Ballard and Angela Carter to A.S. Byatt, John Fowles and V.S. Naipaul.
Additional text
These essays explore 1960s British fiction within the historical and cultural context of the decade to convey why the selected works were influential at the time and why they continue to give insight into postwar and postcolonial Britain … Features include three helpful timelines: major works of the 1960s, key national events, and significant international events. Revisiting the richness of 1960s British fiction gives new insights into the life and changing culture of the time, particularly for those who did not experience this exuberant decade first-hand.
