Despite its international significance, Madrid has been almost entirely ignored by urban, literary and cultural studies published in English. A Cultural History of Madrid: Modernism and the Urban Spectacle corrects that oversight by presenting an urban and cultural history of the city from the turn of the century to the early 1930s.Between 1900 and 1930, Madrid's population doubled to almost one million, with less than half the population being indigenous to the city itself. Far from the 'Castilian' capital it was made out to be, Madrid was fast becoming a socially magnetic, increasingly secular and cosmopolitan metropolis. Parsons explores the interface between elite, mass and popular culture in Madrid while considering the construction of a modern madrileno identity that developed alongside urban and social modernization. She emphasizes the interconnection of art and popular culture in the creation of a metropolitan personality and temperament.The book draws on literary, theatrical, cinematic and photographic texts, including the work of such figures as Ramon Mesonero Romanos, Benito Perez Galdos, Pio Baroja, Ramon Gomez de la Serna, Ramon Valle-Inclan and Maruja Mallo. In addition, the author examines the development of new urban-based art forms and entertainments such as the zarzuela, music halls and cinema, and considers their interaction with more traditional cultural identities and activities. In arguing that traditional aspects of culture were incorporated into the everyday life of urban modernity, Parsons shows how the boundaries between 'high' and 'low' culture became increasingly blurred as a new identity influenced by modern consumerism emerged. She investigates theinteraction of the geographical landscape of the city with its expression in both the popular imagination and in aesthetic representations, detailing and interrogating the new freedoms, desires and perspectives of the Madrid modernista.

Streetwalking the Metropolis makes an important contribution to ongoing debates on gender, the city and modernity. Re-drawing the gendered map of urban modernism, it offers stimulating accounts of a range of writers including Amy Levy, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, Rosamund Lehmann. Jean Rhys, Janet Flanner, Djuna Barnes, Anais Nin, Elizabeth Bowen and Doris Lessing.

In this illuminating and lucid study, Deborah Parsons examines the psychological and stylistic aspects of Djuna Barnes's work within the social, cultural and aesthetic context of the modernist period. Djuna Barnes once described herself as one of the most famous unknowns of the century. Revisionary accounts of female modernist writers have reawakened interest in her work, yet she remains a unique and idiosyncratic figure, unassimilated by models of American expatriate or Sapphic modernism. In this illuminating and lucid study, Deborah Parsons examines the range of Barnes's oeuvre; her early journalism, short stories and one act dramas, poetry, the family chronicle Ryder, the Ladies Almanack, and her late play The Antiphon, as well as her modernist classic Nightwood. She explores the psychological and stylistic aspect of Barnes's work through close analysis of the texts within their social, cultural and aesthetic context, and provides an indispensable and enriching guide to Barnes's artistic identity and poetic vision. Barnes's determined inversion of generic, social, sexology, degeneration, ethnography and decadence, her unusual childhood, her professional friendships with T.S.Eliot and James Joyce, and her controversial lesbianism are all highlighted and discussed in this introduction to a bold and enigmatic writer.

Despite its international significance, Madrid has been almost entirely ignored by urban, literary and cultural studies published in English. A Cultural History of Madrid: Modernism and the Urban Spectacle corrects that oversight by presenting an urban and cultural history of the city from the turn of the century to the early 1930s.
Between 1900 and 1930, Madrid's population doubled to almost one million, with less than half the population being indigenous to the city itself. Far from the 'Castilian' capital it was made out to be, Madrid was fast becoming a socially magnetic, increasingly secular and cosmopolitan metropolis. Parsons explores the interface between elite, mass and popular culture in Madrid while considering the construction of a modern madrileno identity that developed alongside urban and social modernization. She emphasizes the interconnection of art and popular culture in the creation of a metropolitan personality and temperament.
The book draws on literary, theatrical, cinematic and photographic texts, including the work of such figures as Ramon Mesonero Romanos, Benito Perez Galdos, Pio Baroja, Ramon Gomez de la Serna, Ramon Valle-Inclan and Maruja Mallo. In addition, the author examines the development of new urban-based art forms and entertainments such as the zarzuela, music halls and cinema, and considers their interaction with more traditional cultural identities and activities. In arguing that traditional aspects of culture were incorporated into the everyday life of urban modernity, Parsons shows how the boundaries between 'high' and 'low' culture became increasingly blurred as a new identity influenced by modern consumerism emerged. She investigatesthe interaction of the geographical landscape of the city with its expression in both the popular imagination and in aesthetic representations, detailing and interrogating the new freedoms, desires and perspectives of the Madrid modernista.

Streetwalking the Metropolis makes an important contribution to ongoing debates on gender, the city and modernity. Re-drawing the gendered map of urban modernism, it offers stimulating accounts of a range of writers including Amy Levy, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, Rosamund Lehmann. Jean Rhys, Janet Flanner, Djuna Barnes, Anais Nin, Elizabeth Bowen and Doris Lessing.