Alexandra Harris (1) (1981–)

Romantic Moderns is not a ... guidebook to the period ... this is a book about art and place.
I found this generous and expansive book to be an enlightening supplement to other studies of 1930’s and 1940’s England, complementing them, as it is selective in emphasising the Romantic as avant-garde culture takes a step back from European Modernism, to reconnect with earlier British art.
It therefore provides a wide ranging review of culture in Britain/England from a different perspective. This is not about Auden’s “low dishonest decade”, and knowingly doesn’t concentrate on author’s and artists responses to the political situation, instead highlighting their retreat to Georgian sensibilities or attempts to marry the English landscape tradition with European Modernism.
The book looks at lesser known artists, such as John Piper, Eric Ravilious, Rex Whistler and Cecil Beaton, and refers to the writings of the Sitwells, Evelyn Waugh and Elizabeth Bowen, rather than George Orwell and Christopher Isherwood; Betjeman, as distinguished from Spender and MacNeice.
The book is beautifully written, for example of Henry Green’s novel:
Full of ornament and sensuality, Loving (1945) is, like Brideshead, a butter-book, making up for what is rationed.
As a cultural history, this book is also excellent at highlighting renewed interest in authors and painters of the past, for example in the chapter about village life, the reissues of Gilbert White’s The Natural History of Selbourne (1789) with contemporary illustrations. The chapter on village life also shows the author’s wide reading of the period, when after referencing Waugh, Orwell and Greene, she mentions in passing two villages of crime fiction (Sayer’s Fenchurch St Paul and Christie’s St Mary Mead).
For me, this is an excellent book to fill out my knowledge of the period, but isn’t appropriate as an introduction.

Beautifully produced and illustrated, as you expect from Thames and Hudson, with endpapers replicating a Tree and Cow wallpaper design of Edward Bawden.… (altro)

You can tell when someone is English, as they will talk about the weather whenever possible. They will study the weather forecasts for the glimmer of hope that a sunny day offers and are as surprised as the experts in the Met office when it rains. In this book, Harris takes a detailed examination of the responses to the wide variety of weather and the seasons that authors and artists have had over two millennia. Early Roman mosaics have been discovered with seasonal details, and ancient Saxon writings have lamentations on the coldness of exile and their writing talks about how many winters old people were. Focus on particular details of the weather, such as storms, birdlife, rain clouds and flowers, fascinated different eras in turn. Harris has unearthed all sorts of treasures; a fragile glass with a silver rim, last used at the frost fairs when the Thames regularly froze over, the scowling face of Winter in a Roman mosaic and chart for predicting the weather for the year ahead.

Harris has written a dense tome, but thankfully not an unreadable one. Each chapter is packed full of detail for each era, subject and individual covered. Her readable prose is enhanced with excellent reproductions and photographs, as we have come to expect from the art publisher Thames and Hudson. This makes this not only a pleasure to read, but it is a joy to hold and look at too. A very good book that can be dipped into time and time again.… (altro)

It is safe to say that I am hooked. This short and focused biography has gotten me so excited to keep delving into Woolf's works and life. The tight writing of this biography means that you don't get in depth about every friendship or movement that Woolf is associated with, but Harris does a great job of introducing the reader to the Woolf's growth as a writer and her processes of writing. I'm fascinated by how different the form is of all of her books and I want to struggle through them all eventually. I'm sure it will be a long process and not always easy or fun, but I'm looking forward to the challenge!… (altro)

Short, sharp introduction to Woolf's life and work, with lots of photos. Despite this, Ms Harris writes with a sophisticated enough style to suit both academics and general readers. She also does what the more expansive 90s biog by Hermione Lee can't - updates the legacy of Woolf to suggest that the Hollywood film The Hours unfairly simplifies Woolf as mentally ill, self-absorbed and intense. All of which was true from time to time, but is rather unfair to her other, less filmic characteristics: she was also witty, hard working, innovative, sociable and progressive. Harris also manages to squeeze in a thesis of her own: that Woolf ultimately eludes any attempt to pin her down one way or another, and that this quality is the key to her continuing popularity today.… (altro)