Popular Modernisms? Resituating R. H. Mottram’s post-war fiction

Frayn, Andrew

Abstract

R.H. Mottram’s critically-acclaimed novels of The Spanish Farm Trilogy (1924-27) used to great effect his experience of the defining historical event of the age. These were his first novels, although he had previously been on the periphery of London’s progressive literary circles in publishing some rather fey poetry as ‘J. Marjoram’ in The English Review under Ford Madox Ford’s editorship. Mottram combines a loyalty to the realist novel – he described himself as ‘a Victorian by birth and training’ – with modernist techniques. In terms of time and narrative, he uses a different protagonist in each novel, telling his story from concurrent and intersecting viewpoints; in the final volume of the trilogy he focuses on the Stephen Dormer, an everyman modern administrator. The success of the novel series allowed Mottram to leave the security of his position as a bank clerk to become a professional author; he remained one for the next forty years. However, the remainder of his writing is almost entirely neglected, critically and commercially, apart further works, both fiction and non-fiction, that discuss the First World War. This paper concludes by using Mottram’s disparate prose oeuvre to discuss the relationship between major historical events, canonicity and commerciality.

Citation

Frayn, A. (2017, April). Popular Modernisms? Resituating R. H. Mottram’s post-war fiction. Paper presented at The Fictional First World War: Imagination and Memory Since 1914, University of Aberdeen

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: The Fictional First World War: Imagination and Memory Since 1914
• Start Date: Apr 6, 2017
• End Date: Apr 9, 2017
• Deposit Date: Apr 26, 2023