An indispensable book for students and scholars of 1930s literary culture

English Studies

Too long caricatured as an anomalous 'Red Decade', the real importance of the 1930s as a node of twentieth-century literary and cultural production can no longer be in doubt. The insightful contributions to this volume turn to works that have tended to fall by the wayside of literary historiography. In reclaiming a rich body of middlebrow, queer, working-class, and feminist writings, this superb collection explains how and why the '30s should matter to us.

Benjamin Kohlmann, Professor of English Literature, University of Regensburg, Germany

This bold addition to the Bloomsbury Decades Series transforms the weary “Thirties” into an intriguing new literary period. It presents cutting-edge research on queer, proletarian, anti-racist, and feminist writings that encompass bourgeois modernism while speaking directly to twenty-first century dreams of a liberated future.

Kristin Bluemel, Professor of English, Monmouth University, USA