Imagism

Much the same territory is covered by COFFMAN’s book. However, this book is more analytical and recognises the variety of practices contained within the term “Imagist Movement”. In the introductory chapters, charting the rise of the movement in two stages (roughly dividing into the periods before and after Pound fell out with the Amy Lowell in 1914), the book gives a fairly comprehensive account of the principal events, publications, and theories of the aesthetic tendencies grouped around Imagism. These chapters form the general background for the remaining ones, which analyse in greater detail the parts played by key theorists and writers, such as Hulme and Pound, and movements such as symbolism, Lowell’s “Amygism”, Vorticism, and other lesser subjects. The book concludes with a brief assessment of the limitations and strengths of the movement, and a cursory glance at its legacy. The book is now rather dated in its methodology, but nevertheless contains some interesting information in unpublished extracts from correspondence and private interviews.