Farming and Agriculture in Literary Modernism

Abstract

This article seeks to cultivate a better understanding of the influence of agriculture and farming on literary modernism. It begins with a brief analysis of agriculture in the work of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, before exploring the significance of farming in relation to Ford Madox Ford, John Middleton Murry and T. S. Eliot. Following on from this initial consideration of literary modernism and agriculture, it then proceeds to investigate Ezra Pound's position within environmental modernism, through exploring the influence of the organic husbandry movement on his social and political criticism. In particular, it examines Pound's active engagement with notable organic magazines of the period including the New English Weekly (to which Pound contributed over 200 pieces between 1932–1940 and authored its ‘American Notes’ in 1935) and the Townsman. Through an examination of Pound's affiliation with the organic movement, it will illustrate that their mutual agricultural concerns were invariably connected to the wider financial considerations of economic and monetary reform, including the social credit theories of Major C. H. Douglas.