Modernism's Print Cultures

The print culture of the early twentieth century has become a major area of interest in contemporary Modernist Studies. Modernism's Print Cultures surveys the explosion of scholarship in this field and provides an incisive, well-informed guide for students and scholars alike. Surveying the key critical work of recent decades, the book explores such topics as:

- Periodical publishing – from 'little magazines' such as Rhythm to glossy publications such as Vanity Fair
- The material aspects of early twentieth-century publishing – small presses, typography, illustration and book design
- The circulation of modernist print artefacts through the book trade, libraries, book clubs and cafes
- Educational and political print initiatives

Including accounts of archival material available online, targeted lists of key further reading and a survey of new trends in the field, this is an essential guide to an important area in the study of modernist literature.

“An exemplary book … Modernism’s Print Cultures maintains these high standards and is the best single introduction to the newish field of modernism’s complex engagement with book history, periodical studies, and various other forms of printed materials: it is impressive in its coverage and authoritative in its judgments … If you wish to learn more of how the field of print culture studies is transforming the study of
modernism, this book is the place to start.” - James Joyce Quarterly

“An example of the way in which the efforts of the field include, but go beyond, the expansion of the canon, to question the basic assumptions of modernist (and other) ideologies… The book goes on to offer a fascinating overview of the interlocking history of modernist studies and the study of periodical culture, and of books as material objects… This volume does a particularly good job of emphasizing the linked fortunes of the new modernist studies and the study of print culture more broadly.” —Twentieth-Century Literature

“Hammill and Hussey move methodically through the history of book history and periodical studies since modernism’s infancy, arguing that “it is possible to trace an almost continuous attention to the issues and questions addressed by the term ‘print culture’ from the late nineteenth century . . . to now” (24). Their task is to demonstrate how the attention paid to modernist print culture in the twenty-first century has illuminated the fact that the debates and insights of our contemporary critical practice are precisely those than animated writers, editors, publishers, and readers more than a hundred years earlier. At this they succeed with real distinction, devoting substantial chapters to the modernist book (and magazine) as a physical object, the circulation of modernist print, and the social life of politically oriented publications. Throughout, they are commanding and lucid, detailing a robust archive while at the same time attending to how critical engagements with that archive continue to rewrite the story of modernist studies.” – Modernism/modernity