Pygmalion

by Pericles Lewis George Bernard Shaw’s best-known work, Pygmalion (1913), premiered in Vienna in German translation before shocking the London theater world with Eliza Doolittle’s exclamation “not bloody likely.” It features the Professor of Phonetics Henry Higgins, who transforms the flower-girl Eliza into a duchess by teaching her how to enunciate. Here, the worldly wisdom… Continue Reading Pygmalion

Swann’s Way

by Elyse Graham, Steven Hobbs, and Laura B. Marcus Swann’s Way, the first installment of Marcel Proust‘s seven-volume In Search of Lost Time, was published in 1913. Overview by Elyse Graham The famous opening passage of Swann’s Way, in which the narrator describes his periodic experience of emerging from sleep without a clear sense of… Continue Reading Swann’s Way

Remembrance of Things Past (A la recherché du temps perdu)

by Pericles Lewis Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), also known by a more literal translation of its French title, In Search of Lost Time, is the only modernist novel that has a fair claim to being as important in the history of the genre as James Joyce’s Ulysses. Joyce claimed not to have… Continue Reading Remembrance of Things Past (A la recherché du temps perdu)

Exhibition of the Camden Town Group and Others

This exhibition was held from December 1913 to January 1914 at the Brighton City Art Gallery. Although it was advertised as ‘An exhibition of the Camden Town Group and Others’ – the catalogue sported the title ‘An exhibition of English Post-Impressionists, Cubists and Others’ and the introduction by J. B. Manson called it an exhibition… Continue Reading Exhibition of the Camden Town Group and Others

The Judgment

Published in 1913, “The Judgment” is a short story written by Franz Kafka. Among Kafka’s critics, it is often viewed as his “breakthrough” work, in which his unique literary style is fully revealed for the first time.[1] In the story, the titular judgment, which is pronounced over the main character, Georg Bendemann, by his father,… Continue Reading The Judgment

Maurice

E.M. Forster’s novel Maurice, written in 1913 but published only posthumously in 1971, tells the story of a homosexual love affair, in the context of a society (like that of Howards End) riven by class conflict. It ends with the title character escaping from civilization and going to live in the country with his working-class… Continue Reading Maurice

“On Impressionism”

by Anthony Domestico As Ford Madox Ford wrote in an introduction to The Good Soldier, this 1914 novel was his initial attempt “to extend [himself], to use a phrase of horse-race training.”[1] Ford explains that The Good Soldier was his first bid to put his theoretical concerns about the novel into fictional, fleshly life.  He… Continue Reading “On Impressionism”

Chance

by Michaela Bronstein Joseph Conrad’s Chance (1913) brought him public sales and success after years of relatively obscure work on the novels now considered his masterpieces. Conrad was working on Chance by 1905, but until May 1911 he worked slowly. The novel began serial publication in 1912. In 1914 the book form (published September 1913) outsold… Continue Reading Chance