Contemporaries and Snobs
Contemporaries and Snobs

Author: Laura Riding

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2014-02-28

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 081735767X

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This new edition of Contemporaries and Snobs, a landmark collection of essays by Laura Riding, offers a counter-history of high modernist poetics. Laura Riding’s Contemporaries and Snobs (1928) was the first volume of essays to engage critically with high modernist poetics from the position of the outsider. For readers today, it offers a compelling account—by turns personal, by turns historical—of how the institutionalization of modernism denuded experimental poetry. Most importantly, Contemporaries and Snobs offers a counter-history of the idiosyncratic, of what the institution of modernism left (and leaves) behind. With Gertrude Stein as its figurehead, the book champions the noncanonical, the “barbaric,” and the undertheorized. Riding’s nuanced defense of a poetics of the person in Contemporaries and Snobs represents a forgotten but essential first attempt to identify and foster what is now a well-defined poetic lineage that leads from Stein to the contemporary experimental avant-garde. In these essays, Riding takes her readers on a remarkably thorough tour through the critical scene of the 1920s. Among other influential treatises, she considers T. S. Eliot’s The Sacred Wood and his editorial essays in The Criterion, Allen Tate’s “Poetry and the Absolute,” John Crowe Ransom’s essays on the modernist poet, Edgell Rickword’s essays in The Calendar of Modern Letters, and Herbert Read’s posthumous publication of T. E. Hulme’s essays. All of this criticism, Riding notes, gave modern poets a sheen of seriousness and professionalism, but was it good for poetry? Her decisive answer is “no.” This new edition includes an introduction by Laura Heffernan and Jane Malcolm that makes legible the many connections between Contemporaries and Snobs and the critical debates and poetic experiments of the 1920s, as well as explanatory notes, a chronological bibliography of Riding’s work, and an index of proper names.

The New Book of Snobs
The New Book of Snobs

Author: D.J. Taylor

Publisher: Constable

Published: 2016-10-20

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1472123956

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'Hugely enjoyable' AN Wilson, Sunday Times 'Thoughtful, entertaining and enjoyable' Michael Gove, Book of the Week, The Times Inspired by William Makepeace Thackeray, the first great analyst of snobbery, and his trail-blazing The Book of Snobs (1848), D. J. Taylor brings us a field guide to the modern snob. Short of calling someone a racist or a paedophile, one of the worst charges you can lay at anybody's door in the early twenty-first century is to suggest that they happen to be a snob. But what constitutes snobbishness? Who are the snobs and where are they to be found? Are you a snob? Am I? What are the distinguishing marks? Snobbery is, in fact, one of the keys to contemporary British life, as vital to the backstreet family on benefits as the proprietor of the grandest stately home, and an essential element of their view of who of they are and what the world might be thought to owe them. The New Book of Snobs will take a marked interest in language, the vocabulary of snobbery - as exemplified in the 'U' and 'Non U' controversy of the 1950s - being a particular field in which the phenomenon consistently makes its presence felt, and alternate social analysis with sketches of groups and individuals on the Thackerayan principle. Prepare to meet the Political Snob, the City Snob, the Technology Snob, the Property Snob, the Rural Snob, the Literary Snob, the Working-class Snob, the Sporting Snob, the Popular Cultural Snob and the Food Snob.

Society Rules
Society Rules

Author: Julian Fellowes

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Published: 2016-07-05

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781250119612

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"The English, of all classes as it happens, are addicted to exclusivity. Leave three Englishmen in a room and they will invent a rule that prevents a fourth joining them." In Snobs, Charles, heir to the Marquess of Uckfield, is one of the most eligible young aristocrats in England—at least according to the gossip columns. And when he proposes to Edith Lavery, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed daughter of a moderately successful accountant and social-climbing mother, she accepts. But is she really in love with Charles? Or with his title, position, and all its accompanying advantages? In Past Imperfect, our narrator is summoned to the deathbed of the extravagantly wealthy Damian Baxter—a friend-turned-enemy from their raucus Cambridge days—who begs his old acquaintance for help tracking down the author of an anonymous letter claiming Baxter as the father of her child. The search takes the narrator back to the extraordinary world of swinging London, where aristocratic parents schemed to find suitable matches for their daughters while someone snuck hash into the brownies at a ball at Madame Tussaud's. It was a time when everything seemed to be changing—and not always quite as expected. These two irresistible novels immerse us in a contemporary England governed by secrets, status and upheaval.

Snobs
Snobs

Author: Julian Fellowes

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2006-01-24

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9781429904186

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From the creator of the Emmy-Award winning Downton Abbey ... "The English, of all classes as it happens, are addicted to exclusivity. Leave three Englishmen in a room and they will invent a rule that prevents a fourth joining them." The best comedies of manners are often deceptively simple, seamlessly blending social critique with character and story. In his superbly observed first novel, Julian Fellowes, winner of an Academy Award for his original screenplay of Gosford Park, brings us an insider's look at a contemporary England that is still not as classless as is popularly supposed. Edith Lavery, an English blonde with large eyes and nice manners, is the daughter of a moderately successful accountant and his social-climbing wife. While visiting his parents' stately home as a paying guest, Edith meets Charles, Earl of Broughton, and heir to the Marquess of Uckfield, who runs the family estates in East Sussex and Norfolk. To the gossip columns he is one of the most eligible young aristocrats around. When he proposes. Edith accepts. But is she really in love with Charles? Or with his title, his position, and all that goes with it? One inescapable part of life at Broughton Hall is Charles's mother, the shrewd Lady Uckfield, known to her friends as "Googie" and described by the narrator---an actor who moves comfortably among the upper classes while chronicling their foibles---"as the most socially expert individual I have ever known at all well. She combined a watchmaker's eye for detail with a madam's knowledge of the world." Lady Uckfield is convinced that Edith is more interested in becoming a countess than in being a good wife to her son. And when a television company, complete with a gorgeous leading man, descends on Broughton Hall to film a period drama, "Googie's" worst fears seem fully justified. In Snobs, a wickedly astute portrait of the intersecting worlds of aristocrats and actors, Julian Fellowes establishes himself as an irresistible storyteller and a deliciously witty chronicler of modern manners.

Past Imperfect
Past Imperfect

Author: Julian Fellowes

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2009-09-01

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 1429929170

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From the creator of the Emmy Award-winning Downton Abbey... "Damian Baxter was a friend of mine at Cambridge. We met around the time when I was doing the Season at the end of the Sixties. I introduced him to some of the girls. They took him up, and we ran about together in London for a while...." Nearly forty years later, the narrator hates Damian Baxter and would gladly forget their disastrous last encounter. But if it is pleasant to hear from an old friend, it is more interesting to hear from an old enemy, and so he accepts an invitation from the rich and dying Damian, who begs him to track down the past girlfriend whose anonymous letter claimed he had fathered a child during that ruinous debutante season. The search takes the narrator back to the extraordinary world of swinging London, where aristocratic parents schemed to find suitable matches for their daughters while someone was putting hash in the brownies at a ball at Madame Tussaud's. It was a time when everything seemed to be changing—and it was, but not always quite as expected. Past Imperfect is Julian Fellowes at his best--a novel of secrets, status, and a world in upheaval.

Snobbery
Snobbery

Author: Joseph Epstein

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2003-07-07

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 0547561644

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Observations on the many ways we manage to look down on others, from “a writer who can make you laugh out loud on every third page” (The New York Times Book Review). Snobs are everywhere. At the gym, at work, at school, and sometimes even lurking in your own home. But how did we, as a culture, get this way? With dishy detail, Joseph Epstein skewers all manner of elitism as he examines how snobbery works, where it thrives, and the pitfalls and perils in thinking you’re better than anyone else. Offering arch observations on the new footholds of snobbery, including food, fashion, high-achieving children, schools, politics, being with-it—whatever “it” is—name-dropping, and much more, Epstein explores the shallows and depths of a concept that has become part of our everyday lives . . . for better or worse. “Smart, witty, perceptive . . . and almost always—in the best sense of the word—entertaining,” Snobbery provides the ultimate social commentary on arrogance in America (TheWashington Post Book World). It’s a book you shouldn’t be caught dead without.

The London Scene
The London Scene

Author: Virginia Woolf

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2006-07-03

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 0060881283

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This collection of essays inspired by the celebrated writer's favorite walks is available in its entirety for the first time in North America. 96 p p.

Snobs and Past Imperfect
Snobs and Past Imperfect

Author: Julian Fellowes

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781780220239

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Two SUNDAY TIMES bestsellers in one from the creator of DOWNTON ABBEY. SNOBS Edith Lavery, the attractive only child of a middle-class accountant, leaves behind her dull job when she manages to bag one of the most eligible bachelors in town. But is life amongst the aristocracy really all that it seems...' PAST IMPERFECT Damian Baxter is very, very rich. But he has one concern: who should inherit his fortune. A letter from an ex-girlfriend suggests Damian may have fathered a child, but the letter is anonymous. Finding the truth will not be easy - and the only man who can help is Damian's sworn enemy...