The writing of Betty Miller: 1933-1949

Fellgett, Lydia (2014) The writing of Betty Miller: 1933-1949. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

Preview

PDF Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

This thesis is the first comprehensive study of the writing of the author, journalist,
reviewer and scholar Betty Miller (1910-65). As such it seeks to develop a language
with which readers might think about her work.
Analysing the ways in which commentators have redrawn the critical maps of the
1930s and 40s provides a crucial context for an understanding of Miller’s work as a
product of its cultural inception. Exploring the dynamics of the various socio-historic
and institutional forces that have come to bear on the availability and readability of
women’s writing from this period, The Writing of Betty Miller looks at the
recuperative practices of feminist publishing houses as well as the near annihilation of
Miller’s work in the Second World War.
Betty Miller’s bestselling biography of Robert Browning and her non-fiction writing
for journals such as Twentieth Century and Horizon in the 1950s, begin to suggest a
literary context that draws out the allusions in and influences on her fiction. The seven
novels that she wrote between 1933-49, read chronologically, situate her amongst
contemporaneous debates on the gendered dynamics of marriage, the politics of the
Anglo-Jewish experience and the familial impact of war. They also confront literary
experiments of writing timeliness, boredom and violence. Close reading interrogates
her texts’ most prevalent imagery and aesthetics, asking what makes her writing
particularly Millerian, whilst positioning a readership that pays attention to the
thoughtful examination of the morality of everyday decision-making that underlies
Miller’s work.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature and Creative Writing (former - to 2011)
Depositing User:	Jackie Webb
Date Deposited:	06 Jun 2016 13:12
Last Modified:	06 Jun 2016 13:12
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/59219
DOI:

Downloads

Actions (login required)

View Item