Dismantling the Modernist Myth: Samuel Beckett and Virginia Woolf in the Literary Marketplace

As part of the trend to bridge the gap between high modernism and mass culture, both Samuel Beckett in the Literary Marketplace, by Stephen John Dilks, and Virginia Woolf and the Literary Marketplace, edited by Jeanne Dubino, argue that, in spite of any popular image of these authors as artists in an ivory tower, immune from the material conditions of publishing, both were intensely involved in the marketing and commercialization of their works. While Dilks claims that Beckett sought to mediate his engagement with the literary marketplace through friends and colleagues in order to maintain a persona of disinterest, the collection of essays on Woolf indicates that she wrote explicitly about her multifaceted participation in publishing and struggled to carve out a niche between high and middle brow spheres, between popular feminine markets and more “serious” masculine ones. Part biography, part literary criticism, both volumes offer fresh insight into canonical modernist figures, forcing readers to rethink preconceived notions of the relationship between art and commerce.