Representations of Ageing in Postwar British Fiction

Abstract

In assessing representations of ageing in postwar fiction, this chapter focuses on a selection of narratives published from 1944 to 2009, as read by the FCMAP VRGs. Originally there were two lists of novels; an A list of nine supplemented by seven B-list fictions.¹ Considered chronologically below are 11 taken from the original 16 British novels, as well as a further novel, Fay Weldon’s Chalcot Crescent (2009), which replaced B. S. Johnson’s House Mother Normal (1971) on the project reading list as, according to the publisher of that latter text, there were at the time insufficient available books to supply the reading groups, and after trawling for potential second-hand (often very expensive) copies we could find only a very few additional copies which precluded its use.²