Consuming Traditions

Consuming Traditions, the inaugural volume in Oxford's Modernist Literature and Culture series, is a lively and unique study of the curious relationship between British modernism and consumer culture. Through readings of key texts by George Bernard Shaw, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and others, Elizabeth Outka examines the early twentieth century emergence of what she terms the commodified authentic: the aggressive marketing of an object, space, or identity that evokes an older pre-industrial authenticity. With accessible prose and insightful close readings, Outka demonstrates that a unique moment in urban culture created a largely nostalgic desire for a more rural, more culturally 'authentic' Englishness to which both writers and entrepreneurs responded.

Elizabeth Outka is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Richmond. She has published essays on modernism and British culture in Modernism/modernity, NOVEL and other publications.

Preface
1: Selling Authenticity
Part One: Commodified Nostalgia and the Country Aesthetic
2: The Past is a Present Country: Model Towns and Commercial Utopias
3: Buying Time: E. M. Forster and the Neo-Nostalgic Home
Part Two: Urban Authenticities
4: The Vanishing Act of Commercialism: Selfridges, Modernity, and the Purified Marketplace
5: "Lustrous Behind Glass": Woolf, Window Shopping, and Authentic Display
Conclusion: Modernist Excursions