Kultura literacka Anglii końca XIX wieku w relacjach Edmunda Naganowskiego

Abstract

Edmund Naganowski (1853–1915) wrote dispatches from London for numerous Polish magazines, published in Warsaw, Kraków and Lviv, for nearly twenty five years. The topics of his writings were often the English literary and theatre culture. For some titles, he would send his correspondence in for a year, but for other, select ones, he would do it for over a decade. His long-term cooperation with editorial teams of "Biblioteka Warszawska", "Przegląd Powszechny", "Gazeta Polska" (Warsaw) and "Gazeta Lwowska" illustrates how the aesthetic tastes of British middle class would change over time. Naganowski wrote separate articles about particular writers and texts, but he was primarily interested in the phenomenon of literary mass production and consumption, as well as in the spread of popular culture and the kitsch aesthetic. He described the take-over of the literary and readership market by female British writers, and documented it from a statistical angle. In the eyes of the critic, the end of the nineteenth century in England signified a collapse of societal, moral and aesthetic values.