The Penguin Modern Painters, A History
2001
Carol Peaker’s detailed examination of the state of British art between the wars and during WWII. Allen Lane persuaded Sir Kenneth Clark to front a series which aimed to do for modern artists, what Penguin had already achieved for writers: universal accessibility and appreciation. At a time when Penguin’s main output comprised books printed on paper so crudely recycled that whole words from previous printings were often visible, they contrived somehow to obtain high-quality art paper for this hugely influential, and popular series.
‘Carol Peaker’s excellent history of Modern Painters makes a significant contribution to publishing history.’
– Peter Campbell, London Review of Books.
Full review here.
‘Lovely account of the Penguin Modern Painters series. A must if you collect the series. Very well written and great illustrations.’
– Mr S R Reynolds
We are not Barbarians: Literature and the Russian Émigré Press in England, 1890–1908
19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 3 (2006).
Two Russian émigré magazines – the pro-Nihilist Free Russia (1890–1914) and its ostensibly less radical rival, The Anglo-Russian (1897–1914 used fiction, commentaries on Russian literature, and descriptions of Russian literary culture to advertise the race’s creative and spiritual potential and its readiness for self-government.
Read more here,
Mutual Aid, A Factor of Peter Kropotkin’s Literary Criticism
in Unmapped Countries: Biological Visions in Nineteenth Century Literature and Culture, 84. (London: Anthem Press, 2005).
Kropotkin’s theory of human sociability and altruism, as expressed in his book Mutual Aid not only provides the basis to his entire theory of anarchism but also lies at the heart of his aesthetics and his literary criticism.
More here.
Reading Revolution; Russian Émigrés and the reception of Russian literature in England, c. 1890-1905.
Carol Peaker’s widely-cited doctoral thesis about how five Russian émigrés – a Nihilist, an Anarchist, a Tolstoyan, a Revolutionary and a Reformer introduced Britain to new interpretations of Russian Literature which challenged notions of Russian barbarianism.
More here.
