Full Description
Aviation in the Literature and Culture of Interwar Britain looks at the impact of aviation in Britain and beyond through the 1920s and 1930s. This book considers how in this period flying went from a weapon of war to an extensive industry that included civilian air travel, air mail delivery, flying shows and campaigns to create 'airmindedness'. Essays look at these developments through the work of writers, filmmakers and flyers and examines the airminded modernism that marked this radical period. Its fourteen chapters include studies of texts by Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Elizabeth Bowen, W.H. Auden, T.H. White and John Masefield; accounts of the annual RAF Display at Hendon and the Schneider Trophy; and the achievements of celebrity flyers such as Amy Johnson. This collection provides a fresh perspective on the interwar period by bringing analysis of aviation and airmindedness to the study of British literature, history, modernism, mobilities and the history of technology and transportation.
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction: Airminded Modernism.- Part I: Observations.- Chapter 2: 'A Pinch of Inquisitive Pleasure': Wyndham Lewis, the Great War and Military Surveillance .- Chapter 3: 'From this new culture of the air we finally see': 'Groundmindedness' in the 1930s.- Chapter 4: Entering British Airspace: Aviation and Film.- Part II: Industry.- Chapter 5: Flying Blind: The Formation of Airmindedness from a Pilot's Perspective.- Chapter 6: 'Off the Ground and through the Looking-Glass': Airliners, Imagination and the Construction of the Modern Air Passenger.- Chapter 7: Flying Dangerously: Elizabeth Bowen's To the North.- Part III: Influencers.- Chapter 8: 'True Blue Heroines': The 1930s Aviatrix and Eccentric Colonial Femininity.- Chapter 9: 'A Solar Emperor': Robert Byron Flies East.- Chapter 10: 'The Fundamental Magic of Flying': Changing Perspectives in Anne Morrow Lindbergh's North to the Orient and Virginia Woolf's The Years and Between the Acts.- Part IV: Spectacle.- Chapter 11: Spectre and Spectacle: Mock Air Raids as Aerial Theatre in Interwar Britain.- Chapter 12: Airminded Nationalism: Great Britain and the Schneider Trophy Competition.- Part V: Potential.- Chapter 13: When the Wolves Were Flying: The Box of Delights and Flight in 1930s Children's Literature.- Chapter 14: 'The Camels Are Coming': W.E. Johns, Biggles, and T. E. Lawrence's Flight into the Air Force.- Chapter 15: 'Watch the Skies!': Guernica, Dresden and the Age of the Bomber in George Orwell and Rex Warner
