Comedy and the Feminine Middlebrow Novel

'Brown's analysis of the comedic construction at work in the novels of von Arnim and Taylor is a welcome and authoritative addition to the debate about the designation of some writing as "middlebrow".' Women: A Cultural Review 'an entertaining piece of scholarship as well as a valuable one.' Times Literary Supplement 'This is an impressive scholarly work. Erica Brown's excellent new study spiritedly divests middlebrow writing of its pejorative associations and offers a lively and insightful analysis of Elizabeth Taylor and Elizabeth Von Arnim as ironists and humorists whose style, comedic technique and sophistication situate them squarely within traditions of women's writing associated with Jane Austen.' Mary Joannou, Anglia Ruskin University 'As elegant and incisive as the novels it discusses, Brown's book offers an entirely fresh reading of von Arnim and Taylor, and an authoritative account of the relationship between comedy and the middlebrow. A highly original and very engaging study.' Faye Hammill, University of Strathclyde

• Acknowledgments; Introduction; Chapter 1 The Middlebrow and Comedy: Elizabeth Taylor and Elizabeth Von Arnim’s Cultural and Literary Context; Chapter 2 A Comedic ‘Response’ to War? Elizabeth Von Arnim’s Christopher and Columbus (1919) and Mr Skeffington (1940), and Elizabeth Taylor’s at Mrs Lippincote’s (1945); Chapter 3 ‘One Begins to See What is Meant by “They Lived Happily Ever after”’: Elizabeth Von Arnim’s Vera (1921) and Elizabeth Taylor’s Palladian (1946); Chapter 4 ‘One Shudders to Think What a Less Sophisticated Artist Would Have Made of It’: The Comedy of Age in Elizabeth Von Arnim’s Love (1925) and Elizabeth Taylor’s in a Summer Season (1961); Conclusion;