An Unofficial 'The Rest Is History' Reading List

136. 1922: The Birth of the Modern World Part 1

January 13, 2022

Description

2022 marks 100 years since one of the most important years in modern history. In part 1 Tom and Dominic discuss all things 1922: Bolshevism, fascism, and the significance of The Waste Land and...
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Books Referenced

Ulysses

Author: James Joyce

Context:

Discussed extensively as one of the two great literary works published in 1922, described as 'the greatest English novel in English... written in the 20th century,' published on Joyce's 40th birthday (February 2, 1922)

The Wasteland

Author: T.S. Eliot

Context:

Discussed as the other landmark literary work of 1922, described as 'the greatest poem in English written in the 20th century,' published in October in The Criterion magazine

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Author: Thomas Hardy

Context:

Mentioned when discussing the concept of modernism: 'Thomas Hardy talks about the ache of modernism in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, written decades before'

Mrs. Dalloway

Author: Virginia Woolf

Context:

Mentioned in relation to Woolf's response to Ulysses: 'Mrs. Dalloway would be hugely influenced by Ulysses'

The Morbid Age

Author: Richard Overy

Context:

Explicitly referenced as 'a brilliant book about Britain, about British culture in the 1920s and 30s' discussing the sense of civilization having cracked and inevitable doom

Constellation of Genius

Author: Kevin Jackson

Context:

Explicitly mentioned as 'Kevin Jackson's book about 1922' when discussing a murder trial that T.S. Eliot commented on

The Magician

Author: Colm Tóibín

Context:

Referenced as 'a book last year about Thomas Mann and a novel about the life of Thomas Mann' discussing Mann's journey through different eras of German history

Buddenbrooks

Author: Thomas Mann

Context:

Described as 'the great book about kind of bourgeois German Victorianism... about this family in Lübeck'

Dracula

Author: Bram Stoker

Context:

Referenced when discussing the 1922 film Nosferatu as 'a version of the Dracula, a vampire story'

The Black Gang

Author: Sapper (H.C. McNeil)

Context:

Mentioned as the 'second book in 1922' in the Bulldog Drummond series, about a demobbed soldier who forms a vigilante group to fight communists

Bulldog Drummond series

Author: Sapper (H.C. McNeil)

Context:

Discussed as popular adventure novels about Captain Hugh Drummond, described as books that were 'immensely popular' and made into films throughout the 1920s