Museum Trouble (Hardcover)

Ruth Hoberman

ISBN 10: 0813931266 / ISBN 13: 9780813931265

Published by University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, 2011

About this Item

Hardcover. By 1901, the public museum was firmly established as an important national institution in British life. Its very centrality led to its involvement in a wide range of debates about art, knowledge, national identity, and individual agency. Ruth Hoberman argues that these debates concerned writers as well. Museum Trouble focuses on fiction written between 1890 and 1914 and the ways in which it engaged the issues dramatized by and within the museum.Those issues were many. Art critics argued about what kind of art to buy on behalf of the nation, how to display it, and whether salaried professionals or aristocratic amateurs should be in charge. Museum administrators argued about the best way to exhibit scientific and cultural artifacts to educate the masses while serving the needs of researchers. And novelists had their own concerns about an increasingly commercialized literary marketplace, the nature of aesthetic response, the impact of evolution and scientific materialism, and the relation of the individual to Britain's national and imperial identity.In placing the many crucial museum scenes of Edwardian fiction in the context of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century cultural discourse, Museum Trouble shows how this turn-of-the-century literature anticipated many of the concerns of the modernist writers who followed. Focuses on fiction written between 1890 and 1914 and the ways in which it engaged the issues dramatised by and within the museum. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780813931265

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Museum Trouble (Hardcover)
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0813931266
• ISBN 13: 9780813931265
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

By 1901, the public museum was firmly established as an important national institution in British life. Its very centrality led to its involvement in a wide range of debates about art, knowledge, national identity, and individual agency. Ruth Hoberman argues that these debates concerned writers as well. Museum Trouble focuses on fiction written between 1890 and 1914 and the ways in which it engaged the issues dramatized by and within the museum.

Those issues were many. Art critics argued about what kind of art to buy on behalf of the nation, how to display it, and whether salaried professionals or aristocratic amateurs should be in charge. Museum administrators argued about the best way to exhibit scientific and cultural artifacts to educate the masses while serving the needs of researchers. And novelists had their own concerns about an increasingly commercialized literary marketplace, the nature of aesthetic response, the impact of evolution and scientific materialism, and the relation of the individual to Britain’s national and imperial identity.

In placing the many crucial museum scenes of Edwardian fiction in the context of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century cultural discourse, Museum Trouble shows how this turn-of-the-century literature anticipated many of the concerns of the modernist writers who followed.

About the Author

Ruth Hoberman is Professor of English at Eastern Illinois University and the author of Modernizing Lives: Experiments in English Biography, 1910–1939 and Gendering Classicism: The Ancient World in Twentieth-Century Women’s Historical Fiction.