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Reading 1900-1950
http://reading19001950.wordpress.com/
The special collection of popular fiction at Sheffield Hallam University
LATEST ARTICLES ( 392 )
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1944 (1926) by the Earl of Halsbury
The Earl of Halsbury’s novel, 1944 (published in 1926) is a very readable example of the ‘Future War’ genre’. Before 1914, these had mostly been grim warnings... Read more
Posted on 06 December 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
Sunset Over Soho by Gladys Mitchell (1943)
This novel – one of the Mrs Bradley mystery series for which its author is chiefly known – centres around the strange discovery of the body of an old man in a... Read more
Posted on 23 November 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
Robert Peckham (1930) by Maurice Baring
Book review by Sylvia D: Maurice Baring OBE (1874-1945) was the eighth child and fifth son, of Edward Charles Baring, first Baron Revelstoke, of the Baring... Read more
Posted on 18 November 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
Lords and Masters (1936) by A.G. Macdonell
Book Review by George S.: A. G. Macdonell is best known for his comic novel, England, Their England. Lords and Masters is a comic novel, too, but the humour is... Read more
Posted on 12 November 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
Holdfast by A. G. Street (1946)
Shedding a relatively rare light on the plight of rural England in time of war, this novel by A. G. Street (author of the better-known Farmer’s Glory (1932))... Read more
Posted on 04 November 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
The English Air by D. E. Stevenson (1940)
This novel by Edinburgh-born writer D. E. Stevenson (her father’s cousin was Robert Louis Stevenson) centres upon the story of Franz (‘Frank’) Von Heiden, the... Read more
Posted on 27 October 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
Death at the President’s Lodging (1936) by Michael Innes
Book Review by Sylvia D: Michael Innes’s Death at the President’s Lodging (1936) was the first of many novels and short stories featuring detective, John... Read more
Posted on 15 October 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
The Body in the Silo by Ronald Knox (1933)
Title page, illustration by Bip Pares As well as formulating the Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction or Decalogue, the Catholic priest and theologian Ronald... Read more
Posted on 14 October 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
Case with 4 Clowns (1939) by Leo Bruce
Book review by George S: Case with 4 Clowns (1939) is the fourth of Leo Bruce’s Sergeant Beef novels, and it’s not the one to start with, since in it Leo Bruce... Read more
Posted on 11 October 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
Those Who Remain by Eileen Tremayne (1942)
Shuttling between London and the secluded village of ‘Eldbury’ in the early part of the Second World War, this novel concerns the plight of a single family as... Read more
Posted on 28 September 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
The Return (1945 Revised Edition) by Walter De La Mare
Book Review by Sylvia D: Walter de la Mare is probably best known as a writer of children’s stories and for his poem, The Listeners, but he also published a... Read more
Posted on 27 September 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
Still She Wished for Company (1924), by Margaret Irwin
Still She Wished for Company is a timeslip story – a true one, the author suggests – about a psychic connection between two women living a hundred years apart. Read more
Posted on 21 September 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle (1942)
This novel was initially published as Uneasy Freehold. In 1944 it was made into a film titled The Uninvited and starring Ray Milland. Read more
Posted on 19 September 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
The Land of Mist (1926) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Land of Mist picks up some of the characters who discovered an island full of prehistoric creatures in Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, and sets them... Read more
Posted on 13 September 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
To All the Living by Monica Felton (1945)
This novel gives an account of the experience of a group of men and women working in a munitions factory (‘Blimpton’, near the town of Dustborough) during the... Read more
Posted on 23 August 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
Mr Bunting In the Promised Land by Robert Greenwood (1949)
Turning its focus to post-war England and the shape of things to come, this ‘sequel’ to Mr Bunting Goes to War (1941) retains traces of the wry humour which... Read more
Posted on 25 July 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
The Cleft Stick (1937) by Walter Greenwood
Review by Sylvia D: The Cleft Stick is a collection of 15 short stories. Although the book wasn’t published until 1937, all but two of the stories were written... Read more
Posted on 18 July 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
Only Mugs Work (1938) by Walter Greenwood
Book Review by George S: Only Mugs Work is subtitled ‘A Soho Melodrama’, so Walter Greenwood is a long way from the Salford of Love on the Dole. Read more
Posted on 18 July 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
Death Goes on Skis by Nancy Spain (1949)
The writer, journalist and broadcaster, Nancy Spain, published several comic detective stories between 1945 and 1952, of which this is the fourth. Read more
Posted on 16 June 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE -
Pomfret Towers (1938) by Angela Thirkell
This is a comic novel about a group of families in Barsetshire – the imaginary county that Angela Thirkell took over from Anthony Trollope. Read more
Posted on 16 June 2016 BOOKS, CULTURE