In literature regionalism refers to fiction or poetry that focuses on specific features, such as dialect, customs, history, andlandscape, of a particular region (also called "local colour"). Thesetting is particularly important in regional literature and the "locale is likely to be rural and/or provincial."[1]
Thomas Hardy's (1840–1928) novels can be described as regional because of the way he makes use of these elements in relation to a part of the West of England, that he namesWessex. On the other hand, it seems much less appropriate to describeCharles Dickens (1812–1870) as a regional novelist ofLondon and the south of England.John Cowper Powys has been seen as a successor toThomas Hardy, andWolf Solent,A Glastonbury Romance (1932), along withWeymouth Sands (1934) andMaiden Castle (1936), are often referred to as hisWessex novels.[2] As with Hardy's novels, thelandscape plays a major role in Powys's works, and an elemental philosophy is important in the lives of his characters. Powys's first novelWood and Stone was dedicated to Thomas Hardy.[3]Maiden Castle, the last of the Wessex novels, is set inDorchester, Thomas Hardy'sCasterbridge, and which he intended to be a "rival" to Hardy'sMayor of Casterbridge.[4]Mary Butts was a modernist novelist who works are also associated with the idea of Wessex. "Like[John Cowper] Powys, she found a key to both personal and national identity by tuning into the deep history of the Dorset landscape [with emphasis on] sacred places and folk traditions".[5]
The regional novel is generally seen as originating withMaria Edgeworth andWalter Scott, but their regions are hardily "comparable to Hardy's Wessex, Blackmore's Exmoor, or Arnold Bennett's potteries, [... because] they are nations."[6]The term has also been used, in the past, disparagingly, especially with regard towomen writers, as a synonym for minor writing.[7]
Other writers that have been characterized as regional novelists, are theBrontë sisters fromWest Yorkshire. In 1904, novelistVirginia Woolf visited their birthplaceHaworth and published an account inThe Guardian on 21 December. She remarked on the symbiosis between the village and the Brontë sisters. She wrote: "Haworth expresses the Brontës; the Brontës express Haworth; they fit like a snail to its shell".[8]
Mary Webb (1881–1927),Margiad Evans (1909–1958) andGeraint Goodwin (1903–1942), are associate with the Welsh border region.George Eliot (1801–1886), on the other hand, is particularly associated with the rural English Midlands, whereasArnold Bennett (1867–1931) is the novelist of thePotteries inStaffordshire, or the "Five Towns", (actually six) that now make-upStoke-on-Trent.R. D. Blackmore (1825–1900), was one of the most famous English novelists of the second half of the nineteenth century, and he shared withThomas Hardy a Western England background and a strong sense of regional setting in his works.[9] Noted for his eye for and sympathy with nature, critics of the time described this as one of the most striking features of his writings. He may be said to have done forDevon whatSir Walter Scott did for the Highlands and Hardy forWessex. However, Blackmore is now remembered for one work,Lorna Doone.
Catherine Cookson (1906 – 1998), who wrote about her deprived youth inSouth Tyneside,County Durham was one United Kingdom's most widely read novelists in the twentieth century.Sid Chaplin (1916–1986) is another writer fromNorth-east England, who wrote, amongst other things,The Day of the Sardine, published in 1961, which is set in a working-class community inNewcastle upon Tyne,North Tyneside at the very beginning of the 1960s.
Amongst poets there isWilliam Wordsworth (1770–1850), and the otherLake Poets, while the poetWilliam Barnes (1801–1886) is seen as primarily aDorset poet, especially because of his use of Dorsetdialect.John Clare (1793 – 1864) was commonly known as "theNorthamptonshire Peasant Poet". His formal education was brief, his other employment and class-origins were lowly. Clare resisted the use of the increasingly standardised English grammar andorthography in his poetry and prose, alluding to political reasoning in comparing "grammar" (in a wider sense of orthography) to tyrannical government and slavery, personifying it in jocular fashion as a "bitch".[10] He wrote in his Northamptonshire dialect, introducing local words to the literary canon such as "pooty" (snail), "lady-cow" (ladybird), "crizzle" (to crisp) and "throstle" (song thrush).Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892) has been identified as aLincolnshire poet, whilePhilip Larkin (1922–1985) is principally associated with thecity of Hull.Basil Bunting's (1900–1985) semi-autobiographal poemBriggflatts can be read as a meditation on the limits of life and a celebration ofNorthumbrian culture and dialect, as symbolised by events and figures like the doomed Viking KingEric Bloodaxe.[11]
The Royal Society of LiteratureOndaatje Prize is an annual literary award given by theRoyal Society of Literature. The £10,000 award is given for a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry which evokes the "spirit of a place", and which is written by someone who is a citizen of or who has been resident in the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.[12] The prize bears the name of its benefactorChristopher Ondaatje and incorporates theWinifred Holtby Memorial Prize which was presented up to 2002 for regional fiction.
Other British regional novelists:[13]