Andrew Frayn
Andrew Frayn

Dr Andrew Frayn FHEA

Lecturer

Biography

I joined Edinburgh Napier as Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture in August 2015. I was Programme Leader for BA(Hons) English from 2017-22.

My primary research interests are in the early twentieth century, particularly literature about the First World War.

My monograph Writing Disenchantment: British First World War Prose, 1914-30 (Manchester University Press, 2014) argues that disenchantment was not only a post facto response to the war, and conceives it more widely as a condition of modernity. I have written a number of chapters and articles on related authors including Richard Aldington, Ford Madox Ford, and C. E. Montague. I edited special issues of Modernist Cultures on ‘Modernism and the First World War’ (12.1, 2017), the Journal of War and Culture Studies (11.3, 2018), and a Print+ cluster for Modernism/modernity (7.2, 2022).

My current project in this area (funded so far by ENU and the Carnegie Trust) assesses the extent and scope of the War Books Boom of the late 1920s. An initial article has been published in First World War Studies (2022), and I am working towards a monograph on the subject.

My current secondary interest is in rural modernity and rural modernism; I am more generally interested in the spaces and places of literature. A 2023 article, theoretical but focusing on the Cumbrian poet Norman Nicholson, offers the first definition of ‘rural modernism’. Further work is forthcoming on this topic, the next article of which will examine wartime rural modernisms, bringing together the main intellectual strands of my work.

The other main strand of my work is in modernist textual editing. I edited H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds and The War in the Air (Wordsworth, 2017). I have been invited to edit volumes in the Complete Works editions of Ford Madox Ford, Wyndham Lewis, and May Sinclair.

Beyond these, I am interested in ideas about lateness, both in the sense of late modernism, and also Theodor W. Adorno’s concept of ‘late style’. I am working on a survey article, and a piece examining David Bowie’s late style.

I serve on the executive steering committee for the British Association for Modernist Studies (Chair 2022), edit the New Canterbury Literary Society (Richard Aldington) Newsletter, and was previously Secretary to the Ford Madox Ford Society (2011-19).

Research Areas

News

Events

Esteem

Conference Organising Activity

  • Conference organiser: Hopeful Modernisms, University of Bristol, 23-25 June 2022
  • Conference co-organiser, Festival of Modernism, Online, June-July 2021
  • Conference organiser, New Work in Modernist Studies, online, December 2020
  • Conference co-organizer, D. H. Lawrence: New Directions, University of Manchester
  • Conference co-organizer, Lateness and the Modern, University of Manchester

 

External Examining/Validations

  • External Examiner, York St John University
  • External Examining: Scottish Universities International Summer School

 

Invited Speaker

  • Conference talk: Raymond Williams @ 100: A Centenary Conference, Manchester, April 2022
  • Conference talk: Networking May Sinclair, Université de Nantes, France; online, June 2021
  • Conference talk: Beyond the Avant-Garde? Rethinking the Vanguard in British Music since 1970 , Goldsmiths and the University of Manchester; online, July 2021
  • Seminar speaker: Ghent University, Belgium, November 2021
  • Seminar speaker: Northumbria University, November 2021
  • Conference talk: Technology: the International Society for First World War Studies conference, Gettysburg College/online, September 2021
  • Conference talk: Upheaval and Reconstruction: Modernist Studies Association Conference, University of Toronto, November 2019
  • Conference talk: Troublesome Modernisms, British Association for Modernist Studies, London, 20-22 June 2019
  • Conference talk: International Richard Aldington Society Conference, Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France, July 2018
  • Conference talk: 1918 to 2018: An International Conference, University of Wolverhampton, September 2018
  • Seminar Speaker: University of Edinburgh, November 2018
  • Conference talk: Recording, Narrating and Archiving the First World War, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia,, July 2018
  • Conference talk: Orientations, University of Nottingham, 30-31 May 2018
  • Seminar speaker: Scottish Network of Modernist Studies, University of Edinburgh, March 2017
  • Conference talk: The Fictional First World War: Imagination and Memory Since 1914, University of Aberdeen, April 2017
  • Conference talk: Modernist Life, University of Birmingham, June 2017
  • Conference talk: Historical Modernisms, Institute for English Studies, University of London, December 2016
  • Seminar speaker: University College Dublin, May 2016
  • Conference talk: Modernist Studies Association conference, Boston, November 2015
  • Conference talk: Aftermath: The Cultural Legacies of World War I, King's College London, May 2015
  • Seminar speaker: University of Plymouth, July 2014
  • Seminar speaker: The First International Djuna Barnes Conference, Institute for English Studies, University of London, September 2012
  • Seminar speaker: University of Central Lancashire, Preston, May 2012
  • Seminar speaker: University of Manchester, May 2011
  • Seminar speaker: University of Manchester, May 2011
  • Seminar speaker: Liverpool Hope University, February 2011

 

Media Activity

  • ‘Armistice Day and a mythologised, distant version of the First World War.’ Guardian, 12 November 2011, 17. Longer online version available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/12/armistice-day-first-world-war

 

Public/Community Engagement

  • Public Engagement: The Norman Nicholson Society festival, June 2019, Millom, Cumbria
  • Public engagement: Local History Café, February 2018, Erewash Museum, Ilkeston
  • Public Engagement: Lecture to the D.H. Lawrence Society, June 2016, Eastwood, Nottinghamshire
  • Public Engagement: Lecture, November 2014, Beverly, East Riding of Yorkshire
  • Public Engagement: Invited lecture to sixth-form students, December 2013, University of Manchester
  • Public Engagement: Invited public lecture, November 2009, South Staffordshire Libraries

 

Reviewing

  • Journal reviewer: numerous journals and publishers [see description]

 

Date


29 results

The First World War in the 1920s

Book Chapter
Frayn, A. (in press)
The First World War in the 1920s. In T. Bényei, S. Boskani, & N. Hubble (Eds.), The 1920s: A Decade of Modern British Fiction. Bloomsbury Publishing
A survey of First World War literature in the 1920s.

Richard Aldington's Hellenism and the new Modernist Studies

Presentation / Conference Contribution
Frayn, A. (2024, May)
Richard Aldington's Hellenism and the new Modernist Studies. Paper presented at Emerging Perspectives in H.D.’s Hellenic Modernity and the Future of New Modernist Studies, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece [online]
Contribution to roundtable on ‘H.D. and Richard Aldington: “It was you who taught me to love those things…”.’ Other participants: Prof Elizabeth Vandiver (Whitman College, US...

Norman Nicholson and rural wartime

Presentation / Conference Contribution
Frayn, A. (2024, May)
Norman Nicholson and rural wartime. Presented at Cultural Landscapes, University of Cumbria, Ambleside
A different version of this paper is published as ‘Rural modernity and wartime in Norman Nicholson’s poetry.’ Modernist Cultures. See corresponding entry.

"Proved Dead . . . Proved Dead . . .”: Ellipsis, elision and expurgation in interwar First World War prose

Book Chapter
Frayn, A. "Proved Dead . . . Proved Dead . . .”: Ellipsis, elision and expurgation in interwar First World War prose. In A History of Punctuation in English Literature. Cambridge University Press

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Frayn, A. "Proved Dead . . . Proved Dead . . .”: Ellipsis, elision and expurgation in interwar First World War prose. In A History of Punctuation in English Literature. Cambridge University Press
This chapter addresses the use of various forms of typographical ellipsis. In it I argue that ellipses represent failures of communication which are characteristic of early-t...

The humanities and Higher Education in the UK and beyond: lineages and legacies

Presentation / Conference Contribution
Frayn, A. (2024, February)
The humanities and Higher Education in the UK and beyond: lineages and legacies. Presented at The Humanities Today: Global and Social Responsibilities, IIS University, Jaipur, India
I argue for the need to maintain democratic and egalitarian principles of access to higher education in the face of the many challenges of the present day. I think about this...

The War Books Boom, 1928-1930

Journal Article
Frayn, A., & Houston, F. (2022)
The War Books Boom, 1928-1930. First World War Studies, 13(1), 25-45. https://doi.org/10.1080/19475020.2022.2129718
Based on a dataset of unparalleled extent containing nearly 1500 books, this article for the first time offers an analysis of the War Books Boom that combines the qualitative ...

British War Writing, 1900–1920: Empire, Mass Warfare and Mass Culture

Book Chapter
Frayn, A. (2021)
British War Writing, 1900–1920: Empire, Mass Warfare and Mass Culture. In J. Purdon (Ed.), British Literature in Transition, 1900–1920: A New Age? (106-121). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108648714.007
Representations of conflict in the early twentieth century respond both to the impact of mass industrial warfare, particularly in the First World War, and the development of m...

The UK War Books Boom, 1926-33

Dataset
Frayn, A., & Houston, F. (2021)
The UK War Books Boom, 1926-33. [Dataset]. https://doi.org/10.17869/enu.2021.2810868
Data for article 'The War Books Boom in Britain, 1928–1930'. For submission to First World War Studies, Oct 2021. Data collected Jan 2020-Aug 2021 from various sources articu...

Richard Aldington, Images of War (1919) and Death of a Hero (1929)

Book Chapter
Frayn, A. (2021)
Richard Aldington, Images of War (1919) and Death of a Hero (1929). In R. Schneider, & J. Potter (Eds.), Handbook of British Literature and Culture of the First World War (183-195). Berlin: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110422467-009
Richard Aldington is a distinctive and underrated writer. His Imagist poetry and his coruscating First World War novel Death of a Hero (1929) have continued to receive scholar...

Ford Madox Ford, Parade’s End (tetralogy, 1924–1928)

Book Chapter
Frayn, A. (2021)
Ford Madox Ford, Parade’s End (tetralogy, 1924–1928). In R. Schneider, & J. Potter (Eds.), Handbook of British Literature and Culture of the First World War (253-266). Berlin: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110422467-015
A key figure in the modernist network, Ford published new writers as the editor of two important journals, The English Review (1908–1910) and the transatlantic review (1924) (...

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