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08.04.02
Reading
the Decades - John Sutherland
Bestsellers
are the quintessential twentieth-century book. They can be read
for pleasure, or, as 'signs of the times'. They show us what those
past decades felt like. All our yesterdays' hopes, fears, prejudices,
neuroses and, above all, the dreams we had of a better life.
In
Reading the Decades, published to accompany a Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Two four-part
series, John Sutherland guides the reader, decade by decade, from
the 1940s to the present day, through the winding paths of the 'books
of the day'. Starting with the end of World War II Sutherland reveals
a rich and compelling picture of Britain. When the warriors returned
victorious from battle what did they need? A manual to remind them
of how they should make love not war - Dr Eustace Chesser's ground
breaking, Love without Fear. Amid the austerity of food rationing,
Elizabeth David wrote the first of her bestselling cookery books
when most people could only dream of new foods and flavours.
Occasionally,
developments in publishing have themselves prompted social change.
The acquittal of Lady Chatterley's Lover for obscenity in 1960 emancipated
fiction in Britain, opening the way both for the 'bonkbuster' novelists
of the 1970s and 1980s and, in the 1990s, for the shocking realism
of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. With media globalization, Stephen
King's Carrie and Bronowski's The Ascent of Man became forerunners
in a franchise industry embracing print, film and merchandise, continuing
today with the enormous success of Harry Potter and The Lord of
the Rings.
John
Sutherland is currently Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern Literature
at University College London. He has taught in many British and
American universities and has had a long-standing scholarly interest
in popular literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
His publications include: Fiction and the Fiction Industry (1978),
Bestsellers (1980), Offensive Literature (1982) and Is Heathcliff
a Murderer? (1996). He is currently at work on The Oxford Companion
to Popular Fiction.
Publication
Date: 11th April 2002
ISBN:
0563 488107
Price: Β£16.99
Reading
the Decades accompanies the four-part Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ TWO television series,
which will be broadcast, from 6th April.
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