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Chapter 1 - Aliens

from Part I - Nation and Empire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2021

James Purdon
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews, Scotland
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Summary

New Zealand-born Katherine Mansfield identified as a cosmopolite and ‘a stranger – an alien’; she staked her claim to London citizenship through writing the city, while asserting her colonial status and co-opting Maori identity. These multiple identities were playfully self-fashioned, but Mansfield was also interpolated as an outsider by the British state. Mansfield was resident in London during a period of decisive change in immigration politics and policy: from the Aliens Act of 1905 and its classification and expulsion of ‘undesirable’ alien bodies, to wartime legislation designating certain aliens as enemies, and (re)introducing passports, registers, identity books, travel permits, labour permits, and internment, to the declaration that British subject status could be lost by women who married a foreign man, to the expansion of wartime immigration controls in peacetime. This chapter considers literary representations of colonial migration and displacement in and around London, how these shifted during the Edwardian period, and then again during wartime, and how such literary representations shaped and were shaped by a broader national discourse (and discourse of nationality).

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Aliens
  • Edited by James Purdon, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book: British Literature in Transition, 1900–1920: A New Age?
  • Online publication: 07 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108648714.003
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  • Aliens
  • Edited by James Purdon, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book: British Literature in Transition, 1900–1920: A New Age?
  • Online publication: 07 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108648714.003
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Aliens
  • Edited by James Purdon, University of St Andrews, Scotland
  • Book: British Literature in Transition, 1900–1920: A New Age?
  • Online publication: 07 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108648714.003
Available formats
×