Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper
By Alexandra Harris (Thames & Hudson, 2010).
I thought such an extensive subtitle would cover some authors I actually cared about. Not that I don’t like Virginia Woolf, but I was led to believe that I might find anecdotes about some of my faves—Wyndham Lewis, David Garnett… No luck at all there, but my disappointment lifted when I got a sense of what Alexandra Harris’ thesis really is. She acknowledges movements like Futurism, but her interest is in those artists who were using new forms and styles to reframe the past, partly as a protective psychological measure during times of war and international crisis.
I realize the need for a broad, general title that grabs as many potential readers as possible—a properly detailed and qualified title describing what Harris’ book is actually about would make it sound like an impenetrable college thesis—but Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper flummoxed me and nearly turned me away… until I stopped judging it by its cover.