“A book persisted as a coloured shadow at the edge of sight”: Englishness and Influence in Alan Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child

Abstract

Alan Hollinghurst’s fifth novel, The Stranger’s Child (2011) has repeatedly been praised for the connection it established with early twentieth-century writers. The novel is indeed centred on the character of Cecil Valance – gentleman and poet – a fascinating albeit sometimes shallow character, whose tragic death on the French front in 1916 allows his poems, often themed around the notion of Englishness, to acquire an emblematic quality. The subsequent recuperation and transformation of his personality and works are thoroughly dissected while the twentieth century unfolds before the reader’s eyes. Cecil’s primary subject, his family estate, Corley Court, is also a crucial element in the novel. The emblematic country house is thus critically portrayed in order to partially retrace the history of literary Englishness throughout the twentieth century. The novel thus endeavours to explain and criticize how the War Poets came to have such a widespread yet superficial influence on contemporary popular culture.