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Edwardian Hegemony in Tressell and Sassoon

Paul Melia     Instituto Politecnico de Castelo Branco    

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abstract

Ostensibly, all that connects Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (1914) and Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (1928) is that their authors lived in south-east England during the early 1900s and wrote about their experiences. Otherwise, they came from the opposing ends of British society, and their novels were written nearly twenty years apart. That the two works correspond in their portrayals of English society – one as invective, the other as eulogy – is revealing of coeval attitudes, especially of views and behaviour based on social class. Reading other novels and plays of the time shows to what degree concepts of what was socially appropriate held sway over Edwardian fiction. 

Published
April 13, 2023
Accepted
Dec. 26, 2022
Submitted
Oct. 17, 2022
Language
EN

Keywords: Social ClassIgnored Masses<div>Social ClassEducationSportPastoral IdealConservative Consensus

Copyright: © 2022 Paul Melia. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.