‘I’m an adolescent. And that’s how I’m going to stay’: Lessing and Youth Culture 1956–1962

Abstract

The mid-to-late 1950s saw an explosion of youth subcultures in Britain – teenagers, Teddy Boys, jazz fans, hipsters, beatniks, mods and rockers. This range generated a series of moral panics and media fascination. The New Left in particularly were split on whether to see these new youth groups as indicative of a consumer-led Americanization of traditional working-class British culture or as potential sites for cultural (and political) rebellion. Lessing’s representation of youth is particularly interesting in this context, and it is a recurring theme in a number of works from this period including her plays Each to His Own Wilderness and Play With a Tiger, her documentary novel In Pursuit of the English, and her novels A Ripple From the Storm and The Golden Notebook. This chapter traces Lessing’s engagement with youth culture and argues that she articulates concerns within the New Left and British culture more broadly. Her work is read against contemporary cultural commentary from the New Left, especially in a series of articles in the Universities and Left Review, and against other fiction and commentary from the period, including works by Lynne Reid Banks, Anthony Burgess, Shelagh Delaney, Richard Hoggart, Colin MacInnes, Alan Sillitoe, and Muriel Spark.