The leading critic Francis Mulhern uncovers a hidden history in the English nove
l and demonstrates its intimate, formative association with the course of the Br
itish labour movement, from its rise in the early twentieth century to the years
of decline from the 1980s onwards. In this striking reconstruction, culture eme
rges as the plane of social conflict, above all that of classes; the narrative e
valuations of culture's ends--the aspirations and destinies of those whose lives
are the matter of its fictions--grow steadily darker as time passes. Readings o
f classic and contemporary novelists from Hardy and Forster to Amis, Kureishi an
d Smith, among others, illuminate the forms and narrative logics of the genre he
terms the 'condition of culture novel' and places it in international context.
