ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the factors which contribute to the vagaries, and which influence critical responses to a writer's work both in the short and in the long term. Some academic critics have sought to define Rosamond Lehmann's technique and the content of her novels in terms of those of the modernists. Discussion of Lehmann's work has also been omitted from recent literary histories predicated on political grounds. The misspelling of Lehmann's first name by many academic writers, numerous reviewers of her books, and even friends, was a constant irritant to her. The centenary of Lehmann's birth in 2001 did not cause any appreciable resurgence of interest, short-lived or otherwise, in her work in Britain, despite the obsession with the events usually exhibited by British media and academia.