Abstract
A number of autobiographies by modernist writers published in the middle of the twentieth century illustrate a new emerging audience for modernism, both revealing efforts by authors to meet these readers, as well as efforts by readers to catch glimpse of the authors in a different light.
The archives of modernist authors similarly open intimate and revealing glimpses into the ambitions and strategies of the authors of autobiographies, offering new understandings of the continuously vexed relationship between modernists and their various publics. This chapter explores autobiographies by Wyndham Lewis and Gertrude Stein as case studies, detailing how narratives of authorial lives were conceived, documented, published and received.
This chapter outlines what can be discovered in archival research about modernist attitudes to the presentations of authorial lives, exploring questions of promotion, sales and popularity as well as questions of negotiating tensions between high and low art, or aesthetics and celebrity.
The archives of modernist authors similarly open intimate and revealing glimpses into the ambitions and strategies of the authors of autobiographies, offering new understandings of the continuously vexed relationship between modernists and their various publics. This chapter explores autobiographies by Wyndham Lewis and Gertrude Stein as case studies, detailing how narratives of authorial lives were conceived, documented, published and received.
This chapter outlines what can be discovered in archival research about modernist attitudes to the presentations of authorial lives, exploring questions of promotion, sales and popularity as well as questions of negotiating tensions between high and low art, or aesthetics and celebrity.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modernist Archives |
Editors | Jamie Callison, Matthew Feldman, Anna Svendsen, Erik Tonning |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Academic |
Chapter | 22 |
Pages | 285-296 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Edition | 1 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781350450592, 9781350450561 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781350450554, 1350450553 |
Publication status | Published - 11 Jul 2024 |
Keywords
- Art and Celebrity
- Authorial Presentation
- Archival Research
- Reader-Author Dynamics
- Modernist Autobiographies