Public Opinion Polling in Mid-Century British Literature - The Psychographic Turn

Explores the influence that public opinion polling, and the developing idea of a public consciousness in the British mid-century, had upon the literature of the period. It traces the emergence and growing dominance of public opinion research in cultural and governmental bodies, and the ways in which it came to be aestheticized by British writers.

List of contents

• Introduction: From the Era of the Crowd to the Psychographic Turn


• 1: A Science So-Called: H.G. Wells's Reprisal of Academic Sociology


• 2: Polling for Peace: Journalism and Activist Polling Between the Wars


• 3: What the Listeners Want: Public Opinion on the Wireless


• 4: The Gender of Public Opinion: Naomi Mitchison, Celia Fremlin, and the Women of Mass-Observation


• 5: The Morass of Morale: The Ministry of Information in the Works of Cecil Day-Lewis and Elizabeth Bowen


• Afterword: Psychography's Postwar Pivot

About the author

Megan Faragher is an Associate Professor of English at Wright State University's Lake Campus. She received her PhD in English Literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2012, where she specialized in twentieth-century English and Irish literature. She joined Wright State University Lake Campus in 2013 after completing a Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellowship at East Tennessee State University. Her research and teaching interests center on British literature between the world wars, and the intersection between technology, information, and culture.

Summary

Explores the influence that public opinion polling, and the developing idea of a public consciousness in the British mid-century, had upon the literature of the period. It traces the emergence and growing dominance of public opinion research in cultural and governmental bodies, and the ways in which it came to be aestheticized by British writers.

Product details

• Authors: Megan Faragher, Megan (Associate Professor Faragher
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 09.09.2021
• EAN: 9780192898975
• ISBN: 978-0-19-289897-5
• No. of pages: 256
• Series: Oxford Mid-Century Studies Series; Oxford Mid-Century Studies
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; English, LITERARY CRITICISM / Comparative Literature, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Public Opinion & Polls, Public opinion and polls