Hannah Kate

poet, short story writer and editor based in Manchester

A Year in Books: 1921

On this week’s episode of Hannah’s Bookshelf (my weekly literature show on North Manchester FM), I took a look back to 1921. I talked about some of the more interesting books that were published that year – all a matter of personal taste, of course! You can listen to the full show on the player at the end of this post, but, as promised, here’s the list of books I included on today’s show…

Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery

I started the show with an instalment of a beloved series, but a later instalment with a slightly different tone and focus. Rilla of Ingleside is the eighth book in Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series, and it focuses on Anne’s daughter Rilla. Rilla begins the book as a fun-loving fifteen-year-old, looking forward to attending her first adult party, but when the outbreak of WWI means that her story takes a very different direction. This is a coming-of-age story, but not the one you might expect. The book is quite frank about the shadow the war cast over Canadian families, with some surprisingly sensitive exploration of the emotions experienced by young men who chose not to enlist. Rilla of Ingleside is somewhat sombre way to begin today’s list, but it’s characteristic of a certain tone that pervades a lot of the popular fiction of 1921.

Vera by Elizabeth von Arnim

This next book isn’t as well-known now as perhaps it should be, but it’s one of those books that, when you discover it, you want to be a bit hipster about it. Von Arnim’s novel tells the story of a naive and isolated young woman who falls into a relationship with an older, richer man. When the two marry, he takes her back to his imposing mansion, which she discovers is ‘haunted’ by the memory of his dead first wife, the eponymous Vera. Sound familiar? Vera shares a lot of ground with Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and it’s a great antidote for those of us who found the later book a bit unsatisfactory in the resolution it offered to both of the Mrs de Winters. It’s a thoroughly unromantic exploration of an unhappy marriage (two unhappy marriages, really), with Von Arnim’s characteristic eye for dissecting human nature.

Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley

The next book on the list was the debut novel by Aldous Huxley. Set at a country house party for a collection of upper middle-class guests, Crome Yellow is a satirical look at social mores and fads, with some surprisingly frank comments on sex and sexuality. While Huxley might be better known now for Brave New World, Crome Yellow is worth a read to understand the development of the ideas discussed in the more famous book. Like a few of the books on today’s list, Huxley’s satire gives an indication of the various ways the shadow of the Great War lingered over 1921, with biting commentary on the failings of humanity (including a move towards a more selfish and individualistic society) suggesting possible causes for the war and its aftermath.

The Witch-Cult in Western Europe by Margaret Murray

This next book is one that’s been highly influential over the past century, though many people don’t realize it. In 1921, Margaret Murray published an anthropological study of pre-Christian religious practice in Western Europe, arguing that ‘witchcraft’ (as it was identified by the Inquisitions) was in fact a surviving remnant of a pagan religion. The book was based on numerous misconceptions, and it was (and continues to be) debunked by various historians and anthropologists. However, the idea of a pre-Christian pagan religion that survives in ‘witchcraft’ practices has proved to be an incredibly attractive one to the popular imagination, and Murray’s hypothesis directly influenced the development of neo-paganism and the modern conception of Wicca. It’s quite amazing to think that some of the ideas Murray posited here are only actually a hundred years old.

The Coming of the Fairies by Arthur Conan Doyle

The next book is probably better known that Margaret Murray’s, but it’s an equally odd one. First published in newspapers in 1921, and then collected into a book the following year, Arthur Conan Doyle’s exploration of Faerie and the ancient creatures that live there was a response the Cottingley Fairies photographs. Although the pictures had pretty much been debunked by late 1921, Conan Doyle stuck to his belief that two young girls had successfully photographed a group of fairies. On the show, I suggested that both Conan Doyle and Murray’s books – while seeming a little far-fetched or historically inaccurate – were indicative of a growing interest in alternative spirituality and spiritualism that would feed into the development of neo-paganism later in the twentieth century. I’m not sure if this was definitely a response to the war and the pandemic, but it’s certainly suggestive of a search for meaning in a rather terrifying world.

The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer

The final book on today’s list was the one that I suggested was most influential – in literary terms at least. The Black Moth was the debut novel by Georgette Heyer, and her first Regency romance. As I explained on the show, this book was at the vanguard of the redefinition of ‘romance’. Prior to the 1920s, ‘romance’ as a literary category was understood as tales of adventure, exotic travel, derring-do and the occasional supernatural occurrence (like Dracula or White Fang – both of which were marketed and reviewed as romances on publication). Along with the Mills and Boon publishing house, the work of Georgette Heyer was instrumental in shifting focus onto books aimed at female readers, in which exotic travel and feats of derring-do served as the backdrop for a heterosexual love plot. And thus, romance fiction as we now know it was born.

To hear more about these books, and my reasons for choosing them, you can listen again to show here:

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