1950s

Nick Bentley is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Keele University, UK. He is author of Contemporary British Fiction (2018) and Radical Fictions: The English Novel in the 1950s (2007) and editor of British Fiction of the 1990s (2005).Alice Ferrebe is Subject Leader for English Literature at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. She is author of Masculinity in Male-Authored Fiction, 1950-2000 (2005) and Literature of the 1950s: Good, Brave Causes (2012). Nick Hubble is Reader in English at Brunel University London, UK, and author of Mass-Observation and Everyday Life: Culture, Theory, History (2006) and The Proletarian Answer to the Modernist Question (2017).

The 1950s: A Decade of Modern British Fiction is an important work for scholars of postwar British fiction. There are relatively few collections of critical essays focusing on this specific period … This collection ably gives readers a far-ranging yet intimate glimpse of this pivotal decade when Britain developed a sense of itself as a nation emerging from the rubble of the Second World War and the fading specter of its former imperial glory.

• ContributorsSeries Editors' PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The 1950s: A Decade of Modern British FictionNick Bentley, University of Keele, UK; Alice Ferrebe, Liverpool John Moores University, UK; and Nick Hubble, Brunel University London, UK1. 'The Choices of Master Samwise': Rethinking 1950s FictionNick Hubble, Brunel University London, UK2. Angry Young Men? A Product of Their TimeMatthew Crowley, University of Brighton, UK3. 'Mere bird-watching indeed': Feminist Anthropology and Fifties Female FictionAlice Ferrebe, Liverpool John Moores University, UK4. Re-Reading the 1950s Homosexual NovelMartin Dines, Kingston University, UK5. A Vision of the Future: Race and Anti-Racism in 1950s British FictionMatti Roni, Brunel University of London, UK6. Whole Lotta Shakin Goin On: The Politics of Youth in 1950s FictionNick Bentley, University of Keele, UK7. Detective Fiction and the Prose of Everyday Life: Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh and Gladys Mitchell in the 1950sNicholas Birns and Margaret Boe Birns8. Chance in the Canon: Uncertainty and the Literary Establishment of the FiftiesSebastian Jenner, Brunel University of London, UKTimeline of WorksTimeline of National EventsTimeline of International EventsBiographies of Major WritersIndex