Hotel Modernity explores the impact of corporate space on the construction and texture of modern fiction and film. It centres the hotel and corporate space as key sites of modern experience and culture. Examining architectural and financial records, hotel trade journals, travel journalism, advertisements and cinematic and literary representations, it charts the rise of hotel culture from 1870 to 1939. From Henry James to Elizabeth Bowen and Charlie Chaplin, from the ecstatic Waldorf to the ephemeral Ritz, from upstate New York to the Italian Riviera, the book considers the effects of hotel space on bodies, selves and communities.
