In an English Literature Modernism module somewhere inside a Science Faculty building on Oxford Road in 2022, we are being asked to consider how much the Harlem Renaissance was a modernist movement. My lecturer notes that the likes of T.S Eliot, James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield were exiles from their home countries. By choice, they left their birthplaces. Their writing grapples with questions of rejecting and embracing identity. It is non-traditional and novel work.
It’s 6:30 am, and you’ve just arrived at the Bryant & May match factory in the East End of London for a long fourteen-hour shift of dangerous, monotonous work, ending the day with measly wages of just 1 shilling and 9 pence per 100 boxes of matches you wrap. Not only this but ridiculous fines could be imposed on you, such as 6 pence for dropping a tray of matches or 5 pence for being late. You could even be fined for having dirty feet, which was quite possible considering many workers were too poor to afford shoes.
It is not often an author has the capacity to create a shift in cultural conscience. This ability is reserved for the most creative and talented minds: writers that can not only entertain, but revolutionise, galvanise, and place a spark of being into society’s mindset. Having said this, writing craft alone will not suffice, the conditions must be prime and the masses in a place to welcome the change that may arrive.
The 1919 Race Riots, and its greatest tragedy, the ‘lynching’ of 24-year-old Charles Wotten, are some of the most violent periods of racial upheaval in 20th-century Britain. However, despite the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the increased importance being placed on Black History Month, the history of British race riots and its victims are not taught or publicised enough.
Edward Carpenter was born in 1844 in Brighton to a middle-class naval family. He grew up with nine siblings. All of his brothers pursued careers in the armed forces, while he decided to go to university. He was admitted to Cambridge University in 1864. In 1867 Carpenter was offered a clerical fellowship at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He accepted and was ordained into holy orders.
