The 19th-century steam railway epitomized modernity's relentlessly onrushing advance. Ian Carter delves into the cultural impact of the train. Why, for example, did Britain possess no great railway novel? He compares fiction and images by canonical British figures (Turner, Dickens, Arnold Bennett) with selected French and Russian competitors: Tolstoy, Zola, Monet, Manet. He argues that while high cultural work on the British steam railway is thin, British popular culture did not ignore it. 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.

Praise

...intriguing... Library Journal

About the Author(s)

Ian Carter

Ian Carter is Professor of Sociology at the University of Auckland.

Table of Contents

History, Modernity, Fiction * Part I: In the Canon * Rain, Steam and What? * Eight Great Pages: Dombey and Son * "Death by the Railroad": Anna Karenina * Railway Life: La Bête Humaine * Accident: New English Life? * Part II: Beyond the Canon * Crime on the Line * Crime on the Train * "The Lost Idea of a Train": Comic Fiction * Train Landscape: Eric Ravilious, William Heath Robinson, and Rowland Emett * Return Ticket to Postmodernism?