Cross-Channel Mediations

Abstract

In July 1905, in his monthly review of British fiction for the Mercure de France, the French literary critic Henry-D Davray stated: ‘At the moment, on the other side of the Channel, morality and public opinion are changing. Changes occur, hence the inconsistency in literary efforts, the lack of unity in a movement to renew the old frames and old formulas’.1 The beginning of the twentieth century saw the emergence of genres that catered to a wide range of literary tastes. The popular novels of Marie Corelli and Mrs Humphry Ward achieved unprecedented sales, while Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Henry James’s The Wings of the Dove appealed to a more select audience. This chapter discusses the emergence, diversification and reception of British mass-market literature in the early decades of the twentieth century by examining Henry-D Davray’s lettres anglaises in the influential French literary monthly Mercure de France.2 An expert on British literature, Davray regularly contributed to the Mercure de France, translated the works of H G Wells, Frank Harris, Edmund Gosse and Oscar Wilde and edited the short-lived bilingual periodical Anglo-French Review.3 His reports on British fiction are a little-known set of evidence for the changes in early twentieth-century British literature through his remarks on new works, and his comments on the social changes that influenced mass-market literary production in Britain at this time.