This book considers the complex ways in which the hotel functions to express the shifting experiences of modernity in the works of such authors as Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, Arnold Bennett, H.G. Wells and Elizabeth Bowen. The text contributes to the critical debates on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature concerning space, movement and mobility, arguing that the hotel reconfigures boundaries of modernist, middlebrow and popular fiction. Drawing on a range of interdisciplinary theoretical and analytical perspectives, the book provides a critical and cultural history of the hotel in British literature, charting its changing nature and usage from the mid-nineteenth century up until the interwar period.

Autorentext

Emma Short is a Teaching Fellow at Durham University, UK. She has published two edited collections: Children's Literature and Culture of the First World War (2016), and The Female Figure in Contemporary Historical Fiction (Palgrave, 2012).

Inhalt
1 Introduction: Modern Mobilities in the Hotel2 Along the Corridor: Charting the Hotel Narrative
3 Anticipation and Stagnation in the Lobby
4 'The Intolerable Impudence of the Public Gaze': The Public Rooms of the Hotel5 Space, Movement, and Inhabitation: Transgression in the Hotel Bedroom6 'The Bowels of the Hotel': The Laundry, Kitchen, and Back Areas7 Afterword