Lesley Johnson – författare

Originally published in 1979, the central focus of this study is the concept of culture as employed by English literary intellectuals over the preceding 100 years, a period characterized by a constant process of re-definition and change. The tradition of criticism in which these intellectuals wrote represented the artistic imagination as a moral force in society and a fundamental mechanism for social change. The author traces this tradition through the writings of various English intellectuals, using the three main figures of Matthew Arnold, F. R. Leavis and Raymond Williams to elucidate the concept. She shows, through the writings of their contemporaries, how the concept was employed and modified, and her analysis ranges from J. S. Mill, John Ruskin and William Morris, through George Bernard Shaw, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot and R. H. Tawney to Richard Hoggard, Richard Wollheim and R. S. Peters. By discussing the questions of the role of art in society and examining their treatment by different groups of intellectuals, the author has supplied a basis for a forceful critique of the quality of life in modern industrial society. This book will be of interest to students of literature, cultural history and the sociology of culture.

Originally published in 1979, the central focus of this study is the concept of culture as employed by English literary intellectuals over the preceding 100 years, a period characterized by a constant process of re-definition and change. The tradition of criticism in which these intellectuals wrote represented the artistic imagination as a moral force in society and a fundamental mechanism for social change. The author traces this tradition through the writings of various English intellectuals, using the three main figures of Matthew Arnold, F. R. Leavis and Raymond Williams to elucidate the concept. She shows, through the writings of their contemporaries, how the concept was employed and modified, and her analysis ranges from J. S. Mill, John Ruskin and William Morris, through George Bernard Shaw, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot and R. H. Tawney to Richard Hoggard, Richard Wollheim and R. S. Peters. By discussing the questions of the role of art in society and examining their treatment by different groups of intellectuals, the author has supplied a basis for a forceful critique of the quality of life in modern industrial society. This book will be of interest to students of literature, cultural history and the sociology of culture.

Images of the golden age of wireless and family life before the age of television have widespread currency. Their dominance raises fundamental questions about the extent to which people’s memories of early radio and everyday pre-war life are shaped and mediated by these public histories. For geographical reasons radio has played an unusually important part in twentieth-century Australian life and culture. Australian radio must therefore stand as a major example in the study of the medium. This book, first published in 1988, examines the early history of Australian radio, looking at the beginnings of radio itself and at the ways in which cultural tasks were determined for it. This is a detailed analysis of radio discourse and the construction of audiences, drawing on a range of theoretical material to examine questions about the production and dynamics of popular culture, the relationship between politics and everyday life, and the changes brought about in women’s lives.

Images of the golden age of wireless and family life before the age of television have widespread currency. Their dominance raises fundamental questions about the extent to which people’s memories of early radio and everyday pre-war life are shaped and mediated by these public histories. For geographical reasons radio has played an unusually important part in twentieth-century Australian life and culture. Australian radio must therefore stand as a major example in the study of the medium. This book, first published in 1988, examines the early history of Australian radio, looking at the beginnings of radio itself and at the ways in which cultural tasks were determined for it. This is a detailed analysis of radio discourse and the construction of audiences, drawing on a range of theoretical material to examine questions about the production and dynamics of popular culture, the relationship between politics and everyday life, and the changes brought about in women’s lives.

The history of the housewife is a complicated and uneasy narrative, rife with contradictions, tensions, and unanswered questions. In response to this, Sentenced to Everyday Life marks an important cross-generational moment in feminism. Challenging our previous understandings of what constitutes the housewife figure, this book tugs at a critical issue still unresolved in the contemporary world: what is the relationship between women and the home? And why are women so reluctant to call themselves housewives? Drawing on research and evidence surrounding the housewife figure of the 1940s and 1950s, Johnson and Lloyd address the question of why the housewife has been such a problematic figure in feminist debates since World War II. Starting with an exploration of why the housewife of the 1940s became associated with drudgery, this book covers such topics as the ways in which magazines and advertising attempted to articulate an innate connection between women and the domestic sphere, while later films of the 1950s explored the constantly shifting boundaries between social, family and individual desires and constraints for women in the home.Johnson and Lloyd also examine how the home has been a site of boredom, and what happens to the balance between work and family in the modern world. In moving into contemporary debates, the authors explore the uneasy tension between the construction of the modern self and women's efforts to transcend the domestic sphere. By situating their examination in a still unresolved contemporary topic, Johnson and Lloyd offer us both a backward glance and a forward-looking perspective into domesticity and the modern self.

The history of the housewife is a complicated and uneasy narrative, rife with contradictions, tensions, and unanswered questions. In response to this, Sentenced to Everyday Life marks an important cross-generational moment in feminism. Challenging our previous understandings of what constitutes the housewife figure, this book tugs at a critical issue still unresolved in the contemporary world: what is the relationship between women and the home? And why are women so reluctant to call themselves housewives? Drawing on research and evidence surrounding the housewife figure of the 1940s and 1950s, Johnson and Lloyd address the question of why the housewife has been such a problematic figure in feminist debates since World War II. Starting with an exploration of why the housewife of the 1940s became associated with drudgery, this book covers such topics as the ways in which magazines and advertising attempted to articulate an innate connection between women and the domestic sphere, while later films of the 1950s explored the constantly shifting boundaries between social, family and individual desires and constraints for women in the home.Johnson and Lloyd also examine how the home has been a site of boredom, and what happens to the balance between work and family in the modern world. In moving into contemporary debates, the authors explore the uneasy tension between the construction of the modern self and women's efforts to transcend the domestic sphere. By situating their examination in a still unresolved contemporary topic, Johnson and Lloyd offer us both a backward glance and a forward-looking perspective into domesticity and the modern self.