A presentation by Dr Michelle Taylor, Armstrong T.S. Eliot Fellow at Magdalene College.

Join us for a presentation by Dr Michelle Taylor, Armstrong T.S. Eliot Fellow at Magdalene College.

“Clique Lit: Coterie Circulation in Modernism’s Print Ecologies?”

What does coterie circulation look like in the era of mass print, and what does it mean to find commonality in, for example, the restricted circulations of scribally published writings of the Earl of Rochester and the private publications of T. S. Eliot, or in the coterie ethos of both the Wrest Park coterie and the 20th century Bloomsbury Group? This talk, drawn from the introduction to my book manuscript and situated at the intersection of book history and literary sociology, will elaborate the challenges of tracking something like the literary-social form of the coterie through the modern era, and the stakes of identifying such a category at a moment when private circulation — like privacy itself — seems on the verge of collapse.