British Fiction in the Sixties The Making of the Swinging Decade

From television documentaries and a steady output of critical works to retrospective art exhibitions and Austin Powers, the Sixties continues to fascinate us today.
British Fiction in the Sixties focuses on the major socio-political changes that marked the sixties in relationship to the development of literature over the decade. This book is the first critical study to acknowledge that the 1960s can only be understood if, next to its contemporary socio-political history, its fictions and mythologies are acknowledged as a vital constituent in the understanding of the decade.
British Fiction in the Sixties offers a re-examination of canonical writers such as Iris Murdoch and John Fowles. It also pays critical attention to avant garde writers including Ann Quinn, Christine Brooke-Rose, and J. G. Ballard, presenting a comprehensive insight into the continuing power the decade exerts on the contemporary imagination.

Preface
Foreword
Chronology
Introduction: Tiny Revolutions of the Mind
1. Class Issues in the Work of Maureen Duffy and David Storey
2. Realism Renegotiated: Margaret Drabble and Angus Wilson
3. ‘A whirling world of words’: the Modernist Style in Maureen Duffy; Anthony Burgess; and Iris Murdoch
4. Senses of Endings: Play with Plots in the Work of Muriel Spark and John Fowles
5. The Anti-Novels of Christine Brooke-Rose, Ann Quinn and Rayner Heppenstall
6. New Wave and the New Worlds of J. G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock and Brian Aldiss
7. Women and Agency in the Work of Doris Lessing and Muriel Spark
8. Ethnicity in the Work of Colin MacInnes and Jean Rhys
9. Swinging London unmasked: Anthony Burgess; Sheena MacKay’; and Maureen Duffy
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

 

Sebastian Groes is Lecturer in English Literature at Roehampton University, UK.