Posted by Peter Ceresole on August 07, 2003 at 18:04:20 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Intrusions of Real Life posted by Jim McDowell on August 07, 2003 at 17:41:36:
I believe that recent studies (well, in the past 20 years which seems 'recent' to me) have shown that for the middle classes, the Depression years were in fact very prosperous, with falling prices, which meant dreadful pressures on manufacturing workers and coal miners but increasing standards of living for the salaried office workers of London and Manchester. And by the time of the later books, the first stirrings of war production were beginning to feed through into industry- although it was well into the war years before unemployment disappeared.
I wouldn't have thought that the natural audience for the S&A books was very badly affected at all, at any stage, although you can't discount the 'spirit of the time' as a factor. However, like the Hollywood musicals, they might have been just the ticket. I don't know how they were received by contemporary intellectuals; however, AR's history of reporting the Bolshevik revolution for the Manchester Guardian might well have made them favourably inclined to him.