The aim of this Cambridge Companion to the Modernist Novel is to assist readers of modernist fiction, whether they are experienced or new readers of this challenging and stimulating body of literary work. The image of a 'companion' here suggests a kind of comradeship: a sharing of experiences as well as the illumination and pleasure gained through a conversation involving different viewpoints and diverse enthusiasms. This volume seeks, in that sense, to be a good companion to the reader. But it also aspires to be a challenging companion, offering new perspectives, teasing out difficult ideas, and drawing on the rich comparative and critical insights that can be gained through scholarship and research. Its contributors are experts in their field, and bring to their accounts of key ideas and key authors an extensive and deep knowledge of the period and the texts of modernism. The organization of this volume is intended to give the reader the greatest possible benefit from this expertise, and thus to help him or her to gain significant insight into whichever modernist novels they are reading.

The idea of ‘modernism’

The focus of this Companion is the experience of reading English-language fictional narratives from the early years of the twentieth century. The second section of this volume is concerned explicitly with the challenges and the pleasures of reading the work of selected novelists who have been identified as key to modernist fiction. But in addition to such close readings of selected novels and novelists, some attention also needs to be given to the category that has shaped the analyses of these novels by the various contributors and also underpins the coherence of this volume: the category of ‘modernism’. This category is the focus of the five chapters within the first section of the Companion.