Yorkshire Modernisms: A Northern Modernism Seminar at the University of Leeds

‘Yorkshire Modernisms’ is not a finished concept ascribed to a local literary identity but a loose term that opens up conversations on associations between the place and the global movement. This seminar brings together a wide range of papers to explore, examine and interrogate such associations and point to the direction for future studies.

The one-day interdisciplinary research seminar, ‘Yorkshire Modernisms’, took place in the Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute (LAHRI) on 20 May 2023. The event was organised by the LAHRI Postdoctoral Research Fellows, Dr Wei Zhou and Dr Lucy Cheseldine, in collaboration with the Northern Modernism Seminar committee. Focusing on the role of Yorkshire in the production of modernisms, the seminar aimed to remap the literary and cultural landscape in twentieth-century Britain by drawing critical attention to the less represented locale and its forgotten writers and artists.

This seminar brought together a wide range of papers to explore how writers and artists from or within Yorkshire contribute to modernist literature and culture and how the landscape, industries, and heritage in this region influence Modernists from outside. The first panel unearthed literary movements, little magazines and local histories of modernism in Yorkshire, with a focus on figures, such as Herbert Read, Michael Sadler and Storm Jameson, associated with the University of Leeds. The next panel began with a talk on modernist representations of air pollution in Sheffield, followed by presentations on T. S. Eliot’s figuration of the Bradford millionaire in The Waste Land and Osbert Sitwell’s novel Before the Bombardment set in Scarborough. The third panel comprises an account of Edith Craig’s involvement in art theatres in Yorkshire and discussions of the influence of the Brontë sisters on modernist writers, such as May Sinclair and Romer Wilson. The seminar closed with a panel on Herbert Read’s art collection and Barbara Hepworth’s abstract form to open a dialogue across disciplines.