Railways and Culture in Britain: The Epitome of Modernity (Studies in Popular Culture)

The steam railway epitomized modernity's relentlessly onrushing advance. Ian Carter delves into the cultural impact of train technology, and how it was represented in British society. Why, for example, did Britain possess no great railway novel? He compares fiction and images by some canonical British figures (Turner, Dickens, Arnold Bennett) with selected French and Russian competitors: Tolstoy, Zola, Monet, Manet. Detailed discussions of comic fiction, crime fiction and cartoons reveal a popular fascination with railways tumbling from vast (and hitherto unexplored) stores of critically overlooked genres.