Book review: The pub in literature, by Steven Earnshaw

Poole, Robert ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9613-6401 (2001) Book review: The pub in literature, by Steven Earnshaw. Literature and History, 10 (2). pp. 116-117.

Preview

PDF - Accepted Version Available under License CC BY-NC Download (46kB) | Preview

Abstract

‘The conviviality of the narrative premise’ is Steven Earnshaw’s felicitous phrase for the theme that suffuses this book. It is ‘a crawl through the drinking places of English literary history,’ in the company of Chaucer, Langland, Shakespeare, Dekker, Jonson, Pepys, Ned Ward (author of The London Spy), Goldsmith, Gray, Fielding, Cowper, Crabbe, Dickens, Eliot (G.), Hardy, Eliot (T. S.), Coppard, Hampson, Hamilton, Orwell and Amis (M.). It also ‘attempts to weave a pattern out of the strands of “pub”, English literature and England’. It is a labour of love, the product of years of hoarded references and inspired cups and we must be grateful. It will become a standard resort for literary scholars seeking quotable material on pubs (Piers Plowman ‘pissed a pottel in a pater-noster while’), and for anyone who likes to savour ‘the pub moment’ through the medium of print.

Item Type:	Article
Journal / Publication Title:	Literature and History
Publisher:	SAGE Publications / Manchester University Press
ISSN:	2050-4594
Departments:	Academic Departments > Institute of Arts (IOA) > Humanities
Depositing User:	Insight Administrator
Date Deposited:	30 Nov 2010 16:11
Last Modified:	11 Jan 2024 18:15
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/723

Downloads