Sea Changes: British Emigration and American Literature

by Stephen Fender

American Literature & History, British Studies

416 pages, Hardcover

First published May 29, 1992

Reviews

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have had this book on my shelf for a few years and vacillated between reading it and getting rid of it. "Literature" in the title intimidated me. I read mostly non-fiction, filed this under literary criticism and feared I would know enough of the canon to appreciate its contents. Finally, I decided to read it. In the end, I appreciated it very much. Lit here spans from 17th Century correspondence to Catch-22 toward the end covering 2oth Century war novels. Plot synopses are given where necessary. Some things I really liked about this book:

* Cogent arguing by the author that there is a survivor bias in primary sources: People would preserve or collect writing promoting American specialism, but not so much against it.
* More English emigrated not to the eventual U.S. then to it, yet emigres to Canada, etc. are not mythologized. Embrace the mystery.
* Back-migrants were common and an important part of the understanding of this topic. Even Steiglitz' famous photo is actually of back-migrants




Basically, most topics are interesting to me because they are more complex than first supposed and actually as conventionally believed. This work delivers on that.

From the conclusion: "The best American writing, like the culture of which it is a part, continues to reinvent itself, as always, by confronting its contradictions, turning in upon itself to address and analyze, as one of its legitimate subjects, its own inherited ideology."