Graham Greene in the 1930s presents a major new reading of Greene s literary works and critical writings from the 1930s, a period of increasing academic interest and importance. Greene s works from this period encompass a wide range of forms, genres and media, capturing the richness and variety of British literary culture between the wars; they also reveal its urgent preoccupations and challenges, such as the era-defining concern with the relationship between politics and art, and a corresponding fascination with modernity and mass culture, as well as the shifting status of literature itself during the first true media age. Graham Greene in the 1930s investigates this major twentieth-century author s less-considered early works in their original literary historical contexts, and in the context of new critical approaches to the decade s literature and culture: from the reconsideration within modernist studies of the kinds of interwar writing with its characteristic movement between genres and experimentation typified by early Greene; to the current focus on the long 1930s which has seen the decade repositioned at the heart of twentieth-century British literary history. This book establishes the compelling intersections between early Greene and the literature of the 1930s. It puts Greene at the centre of an era of profound and continuous transition, and of a remarkable period in twentieth-century literary history.
1 Introduction: Writing the 'Thirties'.- 2
A Sort of Life: Self-fashioning and Autobiography.- 3 Greene and Genre: From
The Man Within to
Brighton Rock.- 4 Greene on the Screen: The Early Film Criticism.- 5 Authorship and Autonomy in
The Spectator Reviews.- 6 The Voyage Out: Travel and Encounter in
Journey Without Maps.- 7 Journeys Inward:
It's a Battlefield,
England Made Me,
A Gun For Sale,
The Confidential Agent.- 8 Conclusion: Critical Afterlives.
Andrew Purssell has published widely on aspects of Twentieth-Century Literature. He is the co-author, with Richard J. Hand, of Adapting Graham Greene (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
The book is very clearly structured and easy to follow. ... Purssell s own scholarship is impeccable, with extensive footnotes and an impressive bibliography, and his themes are always interesting. ... For anyone interested in Greene s development as a writer in the 1930s, and the literary and cultural scene in which he found his feet, Andrew Purssell s book can be recommended. (Mike Hill, The Newsletter of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust, Issue 104, November, 2025)
