Ocean Liners and Modern Literature

Ocean liners fascinate writers and the public alike. As icons of modernity, mobility, glamour and national prestige, they are widespread in popular culture and, equally, in the canonical novels, plays and poems of the twentieth century. Yet in many literary narratives, darker stories appear, whether of forced migration, shipwreck, war or profiteering. Over the course of a century, ocean-going steamships carried millions of emigrants, refugees, troops, businesspeople, criminals, celebrities, convalescents, socialites, tourists and students. Some travelled in style; others in extreme discomfort. Liners also transported cargo, mail, animals, plants and (inadvertently) diseases. With the arrival of the jet age, the passenger liner suddenly lost its practical purpose. Yet its symbolic resonance was undiminished as it came to embody nostalgia for a lost age of elegant, leisurely travel by sea. This book explores the idea of the ocean liner in the literary imagination, asking how it transformed from an industrial machine into a potent symbol, and how it became a focus for dreams and terrors. It also investigates the role of the liner in print culture. Many stories about ocean travel were themselves read, lent, sold or even published at sea, and shipping lines were active agents of international literary exchange.