Abstract
This article offers a re-reading of J. B. Priestley’s English Journey (1934), focusing on ways in which the book deploys shifting notions of authenticity in response to a background of economic and social upheaval and a burgeoning mass culture. I suggest ways in which Priestley’s text transgresses those generic categories from which it might otherwise be seen to emerge, engaging contemporary history and culture by means that extend beyond the delimiting constraints such categories imply. Ultimately, I argue that the version of authenticity present within English Journey emerges from a multi-faceted vision of the good, which is discernible only at the intersection of competing visions of the nation and its people and is one which, crucially, can be accommodated within modernity.
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