Piltdown, Realism, And Public Trust In 1950s England

Opening with the 1953 exposure of Piltdown hoax, and its surprisingly extensive irreverent media reception, this essay argues that public trust in national institutions was among pressing concerns English culture throughout 1950s, a recurrent theme major realist fiction. Focusing on novels by Kingsley Amis, C. P. Snow, Angus Wilson about fraud forgery institutional settings, proposes questions motivated misrepresentation allowed novelists to emphasize partiality prejudice historical literary narrative ways anticipated reflexivity both modes later century.