Mobility and the Hotel in Modern Literature: Passing Through

Description

This book considers the complex ways in which the hotel functions to express the shifting experiences of modernity in the works of such authors as Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, Arnold Bennett, H.G. Wells, and Elizabeth Bowen. The text contributes to the critical debates on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature concerning space, movement, and mobility, arguing that the hotel reconfigures boundaries of modernist, middlebrow, and popular fiction. Drawing on a range of interdisciplinary theoretical and analytical perspectives, the book provides a critical and cultural history of the hotel in British literature, charting its changing nature and usage from the mid-nineteenth century up until the interwar period. Front Matter ....Pages i-ix Introduction: Modern Mobilities in the Hotel (Emma Short)....Pages 1-28 Along the Corridor: Charting the Hotel Narrative (Emma Short)....Pages 29-64 Anticipation and Stagnation in the Lobby (Emma Short)....Pages 65-89 ‘The Intolerable Impudence of the Public Gaze’: The Public Rooms of the Hotel (Emma Short)....Pages 91-131 Space, Movement, and Inhabitation: Transgression in the Hotel Bedroom (Emma Short)....Pages 133-176 ‘The Bowels of the Hotel’: The Laundry, Kitchen, and Back Areas (Emma Short)....Pages 177-211 Afterword (Emma Short)....Pages 213-217 Back Matter ....Pages 219-223