ABSTRACT
In the foreword to his 1928 two-volume survey English Literature of the Present Since 1870: Drama and the Novel, Austrian Professor Friedrich Wild comments on the recent explosion of English books in his country: “More than ever German translations of the titles of English novels glance at us from the shop windows, with plays by English authors performed in our theaters” (np). Other critics appear to have shared Wild’s anecdotal impression of the growing reach of literature from that land across the Channel. Whatever the reasons European readers found English books appealing, the 1920s and early 1930s spawned a wealth of literary surveys, essay collections, and monographs that promised readers of French and German a “guide book for … explorers in the realm of English fiction” (ix)—in the words prominent French critic and cultural minister Abel Chevalley used to describe his own 1921 survey The Modern English Novel.1 We might assume that the fates of English writers, once and for always, lay in the hands of critics in their own language. Yet this body of writing suggests that foreign critics also helped shape the careers of particular authors and the face of British modernism for new continental audiences. In the case of May Sinclair, the enthusiasm foreign intellectuals showed for her work did not preserve her reputation; however, their commentary is nonetheless important because it signals the breadth of her influence as a writer who helped modernism gain its first toehold in literary history.
