The feminine middlebrow is my absolute favourite "genre" and, like other famous cultural phenomena, difficult to define but immediately recognizable to its fans. The British seem to do it best, especially in the mid 20th century, but there are wonderful novels from every Anglophone country. I am on a quest to find a similar vein in French and Italian writing and haven't had great success. It could be that those cultures don't quite reproduce the cool sardonic tone required, or at least that I require. I still have "Middlebrow Matters" by Diana Holmes to read but I'm not sure it will turn up the French Pym or Taylor or Fremlin.
Have you read any Natalie Ginsburg? I wonder if she might be an Italian example. I've got her novel The Dry Heart (recently republished by Daunt Publishing) on my shelf to read soon.
You know the quote from Othello which is the epigraph of ‘The Tortoise & the Hare? (It’s printed before the Introduction in my 1983 Virago edition)I think the question posed by Emilia ‘Who hath done this deed?’ and Desdemona’s answer ‘Nobody; I myself. Farewell.” - I think that’s so often the painful idea explored in so many of these books. You could describe it as ‘Why can’t there be a perpetual summer?’ But I think it’s darker than that, and often melancholic and repeated across many of these books.
I keep coming back to peek at this post again, because I'm struck by the formulation "feminine middlebrow." I really do love these authors and wish there was more and better critical writing about each of them individually and all of them as a group. Can I ask why you gave up your plan to write a book about them? Somebody really needs to do it.
I have found 3 books that, at least obliquely, cover these authors/time periods: Square Haunting by Francesca Wade, The Love Charm of Bombs by Lara Feigel and A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman. There are a few others that have piqued my interest, but they are either out of print or for an academic audience, and therefore they are well out of my price range.
Anyway, I would read the heck of it, if you wrote it! And, if you're familiar with any other NF "literary history" type books that don't cost an arm and a leg, please advise!
I would like to hear more about the constant fascination / intense conflict with Eliot; is there something tucked away in the archive or do I need to cross my fingers and be patient?
Whoa! Oh you had me mostly uncomfortable until the end. Writers write books. Whew. Mid last century novels about wanting summer to continue forever is my favourite genre. The bedsits, the teacups rattling, the longings, the summer lawns at the village's grand house: I want them all. Unfortunately for me they are no longer available in my local library and now rarely found at the second hand stores. Finding one in the wild is a thrill.
I haven’t read the Cazalet Chronicles - the series that made her famous, 40 years after her debut - so I don’t know if that retains the same qualities as her earlier work.
There’s something Austenian in the light irony of her prose, and upper-middle class milieu, often the tier below the country estate class of the Cazalets.
It’s also in the precision with which she skewers it from the inside - the culture of formal marriage and tolerated adultery.
I'd include her for sure. The Cazalet Chronicles are very readable and there is a family "situation" that is quite devastating but papered over with stiff upper lips (weird image, I know :)). Shades of real life Alice Munro.
"Feminine middlebrow" is largely a post-facto construction of scholars like Nicola Humble and Nicola Beauman. "Middlebrow" (genderless) arose first in the UK through its use by the BBC to characterize its programming (popular music = lowbrow, classical music = highbrow, "light music" (viz. Albert Ketelbey) = middlebrow), then in the US by Russell Lynes ("The Tastemakers"), Dwight Macdonald, and others as backlash against the influence of the Book of the Month Club. There were just as many male middlebrow authors as female throughout the midcentury (e.g., J. B. Priestley, Hugh Walpole, H. E. Bates, John P. Marquand, John Hersey) and just as many American middlebrow women writers as British (e.g., Josephine Lawrence, Edna Ferber, Elizabeth Janeway). They just haven't had champions like Carmen Callil and Nicola Beauman.
Ironically, when Isabel Colegate (herself arguably a feminine middlebrow novelist) reviewed Nicola Humble's The Feminine Middlebrow Novel, 1920s to 1950s: Class, Domesticity, and Bohemianism, she noted that, "There is little mention of sheer good writing, subtlety of characterisation, sense of place, wit, even depth of feeling. Yet these qualities must have been what attracted the author and her friends to the best of these books in the first place." Even the Middlebrow Network's website (https://middlebrownetwork.com/about/defining-the-middlebrow/) argues that "The study of middlebrow culture matters because it illuminates a set of tastes, institutions and social practices associated primarily with the aspirational middle class in the early to mid-twentieth century, and because it helps us understand the relationship between elite, popular and ‘intermediate’ cultural production" -- not a word about the merits of the art.
My point is simply that a label like "feminine middlebrow" comes with the perils inherent in any categorization. On the one hand, it serves as a flag to rally around. Publishers and readers love it because it appeals to the constant demand for "another one like": "I like Elizabeth Taylor: I'll probably like Elizabeth Bowen (or Elizabeth Jenkins)." On the other hand, it separates and excludes: "L. P. Hartley? Angus Wilson? Hugh Walpole? Ugh, they're males!" (They were also gay, by the way). "Elizabeth Janeway? Ugh, she's American!" British feminine middlebrow is practically a brand like Nike now. I'm not sure it's a reliable cultural benchmark, though, certainly not if you go back to the days when Elizabeth Bowen, L. P. Hartley, and John Betjeman were churning out reviews of a half-dozen novels (highbrow and middlebrow, male and female, American and British) each week for the Tatler and Bystander, Guardian, Telegraph, etc. and rarely reaching for easy labels to slap on them.
Interesting.. thank you for this background and appreciate the info. All new to me — but, would guess others as well? Including such terms not being questioned— just that I would still make some of these “fault lines”/ warnings clear if used, or used only as an aside.…. Still, it winds back around to my original premise, i.e. another social media “label” in search of a true “genre”… I live for genre discourse, just not poorly defined or mass-generated pulp which confuses more than helps. Henry still has my best literary commentary vote! (Just not this round.)…So…”Thank you, Alice for the tea… and my best to all— but I must be on my way!…….”
Henry, your columns always engaging— but, on this one I fear you were enticed down the proverbial rabbit hole— and lost me entirely. The salons of today are social media whirlpools which often throw out conjectures and nonsense of silly putty. I love the authors and writing you cover—be they by males, females, or otherwise, There are gems in these writers and noting passing allusions to some terms is good—- but only in passing (MHO). Otherwise, we all become part of silly putty banter and sit at Alice’s table with you as the Mad Hatter….and I forget why or how we got here! ……. Oh my!
As relates to “the feminine middlebrow” references….. this is a conjecture of which has currency in today’s literary landscape? Not clear why or what this term relates to— too many terms today are not clear in context, or even able to be properly defined. They merely are created for whatever reason…. and become part of lexicon without really having particular meanings established…..
The feminine middlebrow is my absolute favourite "genre" and, like other famous cultural phenomena, difficult to define but immediately recognizable to its fans. The British seem to do it best, especially in the mid 20th century, but there are wonderful novels from every Anglophone country. I am on a quest to find a similar vein in French and Italian writing and haven't had great success. It could be that those cultures don't quite reproduce the cool sardonic tone required, or at least that I require. I still have "Middlebrow Matters" by Diana Holmes to read but I'm not sure it will turn up the French Pym or Taylor or Fremlin.
Have you read any Natalie Ginsburg? I wonder if she might be an Italian example. I've got her novel The Dry Heart (recently republished by Daunt Publishing) on my shelf to read soon.
I've dipped into Family Lexicon and liked it. She doesn't have the wryly humorous slant that I love but she's good on her own terms, of course.
You know the quote from Othello which is the epigraph of ‘The Tortoise & the Hare? (It’s printed before the Introduction in my 1983 Virago edition)I think the question posed by Emilia ‘Who hath done this deed?’ and Desdemona’s answer ‘Nobody; I myself. Farewell.” - I think that’s so often the painful idea explored in so many of these books. You could describe it as ‘Why can’t there be a perpetual summer?’ But I think it’s darker than that, and often melancholic and repeated across many of these books.
Yes that’s true
I keep coming back to peek at this post again, because I'm struck by the formulation "feminine middlebrow." I really do love these authors and wish there was more and better critical writing about each of them individually and all of them as a group. Can I ask why you gave up your plan to write a book about them? Somebody really needs to do it.
Oh there are so many abandoned ideas….
Please write that book.
I have found 3 books that, at least obliquely, cover these authors/time periods: Square Haunting by Francesca Wade, The Love Charm of Bombs by Lara Feigel and A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman. There are a few others that have piqued my interest, but they are either out of print or for an academic audience, and therefore they are well out of my price range.
Anyway, I would read the heck of it, if you wrote it! And, if you're familiar with any other NF "literary history" type books that don't cost an arm and a leg, please advise!
I would like to hear more about the constant fascination / intense conflict with Eliot; is there something tucked away in the archive or do I need to cross my fingers and be patient?
I wrote about him for Pentecost but that’s about it iirc
Was it not Bellow who wrote of Taylor’s Mrs. Palfrey “I hear the tinkle of teacups” or have I got it wrong?
Oh maybe
Could you throw in Angela Thirkell?
came here to say this, especially once the war starts and she's writing about it (and it's aftermath).
Whoa! Oh you had me mostly uncomfortable until the end. Writers write books. Whew. Mid last century novels about wanting summer to continue forever is my favourite genre. The bedsits, the teacups rattling, the longings, the summer lawns at the village's grand house: I want them all. Unfortunately for me they are no longer available in my local library and now rarely found at the second hand stores. Finding one in the wild is a thrill.
Elizabeth Jane Howard? Or not modernist enough?
I haven’t read the Cazalet Chronicles - the series that made her famous, 40 years after her debut - so I don’t know if that retains the same qualities as her earlier work.
There’s something Austenian in the light irony of her prose, and upper-middle class milieu, often the tier below the country estate class of the Cazalets.
It’s also in the precision with which she skewers it from the inside - the culture of formal marriage and tolerated adultery.
I'd include her for sure. The Cazalet Chronicles are very readable and there is a family "situation" that is quite devastating but papered over with stiff upper lips (weird image, I know :)). Shades of real life Alice Munro.
Would this include Willa Muir and Dorothy Stephenson?
"Feminine middlebrow" is largely a post-facto construction of scholars like Nicola Humble and Nicola Beauman. "Middlebrow" (genderless) arose first in the UK through its use by the BBC to characterize its programming (popular music = lowbrow, classical music = highbrow, "light music" (viz. Albert Ketelbey) = middlebrow), then in the US by Russell Lynes ("The Tastemakers"), Dwight Macdonald, and others as backlash against the influence of the Book of the Month Club. There were just as many male middlebrow authors as female throughout the midcentury (e.g., J. B. Priestley, Hugh Walpole, H. E. Bates, John P. Marquand, John Hersey) and just as many American middlebrow women writers as British (e.g., Josephine Lawrence, Edna Ferber, Elizabeth Janeway). They just haven't had champions like Carmen Callil and Nicola Beauman.
Ironically, when Isabel Colegate (herself arguably a feminine middlebrow novelist) reviewed Nicola Humble's The Feminine Middlebrow Novel, 1920s to 1950s: Class, Domesticity, and Bohemianism, she noted that, "There is little mention of sheer good writing, subtlety of characterisation, sense of place, wit, even depth of feeling. Yet these qualities must have been what attracted the author and her friends to the best of these books in the first place." Even the Middlebrow Network's website (https://middlebrownetwork.com/about/defining-the-middlebrow/) argues that "The study of middlebrow culture matters because it illuminates a set of tastes, institutions and social practices associated primarily with the aspirational middle class in the early to mid-twentieth century, and because it helps us understand the relationship between elite, popular and ‘intermediate’ cultural production" -- not a word about the merits of the art.
My point is simply that a label like "feminine middlebrow" comes with the perils inherent in any categorization. On the one hand, it serves as a flag to rally around. Publishers and readers love it because it appeals to the constant demand for "another one like": "I like Elizabeth Taylor: I'll probably like Elizabeth Bowen (or Elizabeth Jenkins)." On the other hand, it separates and excludes: "L. P. Hartley? Angus Wilson? Hugh Walpole? Ugh, they're males!" (They were also gay, by the way). "Elizabeth Janeway? Ugh, she's American!" British feminine middlebrow is practically a brand like Nike now. I'm not sure it's a reliable cultural benchmark, though, certainly not if you go back to the days when Elizabeth Bowen, L. P. Hartley, and John Betjeman were churning out reviews of a half-dozen novels (highbrow and middlebrow, male and female, American and British) each week for the Tatler and Bystander, Guardian, Telegraph, etc. and rarely reaching for easy labels to slap on them.
Interesting.. thank you for this background and appreciate the info. All new to me — but, would guess others as well? Including such terms not being questioned— just that I would still make some of these “fault lines”/ warnings clear if used, or used only as an aside.…. Still, it winds back around to my original premise, i.e. another social media “label” in search of a true “genre”… I live for genre discourse, just not poorly defined or mass-generated pulp which confuses more than helps. Henry still has my best literary commentary vote! (Just not this round.)…So…”Thank you, Alice for the tea… and my best to all— but I must be on my way!…….”
Henry, your columns always engaging— but, on this one I fear you were enticed down the proverbial rabbit hole— and lost me entirely. The salons of today are social media whirlpools which often throw out conjectures and nonsense of silly putty. I love the authors and writing you cover—be they by males, females, or otherwise, There are gems in these writers and noting passing allusions to some terms is good—- but only in passing (MHO). Otherwise, we all become part of silly putty banter and sit at Alice’s table with you as the Mad Hatter….and I forget why or how we got here! ……. Oh my!
I don’t know what this means…
As relates to “the feminine middlebrow” references….. this is a conjecture of which has currency in today’s literary landscape? Not clear why or what this term relates to— too many terms today are not clear in context, or even able to be properly defined. They merely are created for whatever reason…. and become part of lexicon without really having particular meanings established…..
An excellent piece Henry which has also given me some new books to explore - thank you!
Am reading ‘The Square’ by Francesca Wade and it’s my favourite book so far this year. Such a thought provoking book.
@thepersonalistreader
Please write the book!