In our time 'Englishness' has become a theme for speculation rather than dogma: twentieth-century writers have found it an elusive and ambiguous concept, a cue for nostalgia or for a sense of exile and loss. Literary Englands meditates on the contemporary meanings of 'Englishness' and explores some of the ways in which a sense of nationality has informed and shaped the work of a range of writers including Edward Thomas, Forster and Lawrence, Leavis and George Sturt, Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, Betjeman, Larkin and Geoffrey Hill. Through close engagement with the language and thought of these writers David Gervais shows the extent to which they have been influenced by the consciousness of working within a long-established, complex and sophisticated literary tradition. In the process he elucidates a nostalgia which lies at the heart of our culture.

"...a wide-ranging discussion of what constitutes 'literary Englands' or 'literary Englishness' in the works of a group of important British authors....readable and lucidly presented....Highly recommended." Choice

"Gervais as a critic is often both sensible and acute." John Bayley, Times Literary Supplement