An Unofficial 'The Rest Is History' Reading List
136. 1922: The Birth of the Modern World Part 1
January 13, 2022
Description
Books Referenced
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)
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
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'
Author: Virginia Woolf
Context:
Mentioned in relation to Woolf's response to Ulysses: 'Mrs. Dalloway would be hugely influenced by Ulysses'
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
Author: Kevin Jackson
Context:
Explicitly mentioned as 'Kevin Jackson's book about 1922' when discussing a murder trial that T.S. Eliot commented on
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
Author: Thomas Mann
Context:
Described as 'the great book about kind of bourgeois German Victorianism... about this family in Lübeck'
Author: Bram Stoker
Context:
Referenced when discussing the 1922 film Nosferatu as 'a version of the Dracula, a vampire story'
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
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