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33 - The Short Essay in Context, 1870–1920

from Part IV - Fractured Selves, Fragmented Worlds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2024

By
Eric Tippin
Edited by
Denise Gigante  and
Jason Childs
Denise Gigante
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
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Summary

Because of rising literacy rates and improved printing technology, the short periodical essay gained in prominence and ubiquity in Britain between 1870 and 1920. Essayists such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Max Beerbohm, G.K. Chesterton, and Hilaire Belloc presided over the essay’s shift away from its long, mid-Victorian magisterial form to something more entertaining, modest, immediate, and apparently trivial. However, this shorter essay accomplished serious thought by way of its lightness, and was uniquely suited to twentieth-century urban modernity, as each of these authors show in their most anthologised essays. While this short, entertaining form of the essay was most prominent, the essay thrived in an unprecedented number of contexts and forms during this period. Oscar Wilde demonstrates the essay’s range in his immediate, paradoxical, irreverent, and serious letter from prison, ‘De Profundis’, and in doing so, hints at the future of the essay.

Keywords

R.L. StevensonMax BeerbohmHilaire BellocG.K. Chesterton1870–1920short essayperiodical essayhumourthe essay and the cityliterature in transition
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The Cambridge History of the British Essay , pp. 497 - 510
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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