‘Living modernly’s living quickly’: Towards Travelling Light

Abstract

The first chapter charts the emerging influence and impact of a travel light ethos from the Edwardian period to modernism. It pays particular attention to the transitional status of the house in Edwardian writing at a time when it was visibly beginning to lose its lustre. The chapter will begin by tracing the genesis of that now-prolific phrase 'house of fiction' to Henry James's belated 1908 Preface to The Portrait of a Lady (1881) and will argue that, contrary to popular usage, the 'house of fiction' originally referred to an amorphous structure on the point of abandonment. It will then look at two conflicting responses to the parallel rise of a culture of portability: Max Beerbohm’s ‘Ichabod’ (1900) and E.M. Forster’s Howards End (1910). The chapter will finish by turning to modernist delineations of a portable culture which has become well-established by the late 1910s.