Montague, C E
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1867-1928) UK editor and journalist, with the Manchester Guardian from 1890 to 1925, a span only broken by active service in World War One; as an author he is of interest for his Future War Satire, Right Off the Map (1927), in which two Ruritanian republics, Porto and Ria, are pitted against one another at the behest of a profiteer, to little avail; some early scenes are based on an unpublished play written circa 1902, but the scenes of conflict in the mountains reflect the author's experience of World War One. Despite his disapproval of the war effort, the seriously over-age Montague had volunteered for active service, but – as soon demonstrated in Disenchantment (coll 1922), his influential volume of essays on the conflict – he had little patience for the patriotic bombast typical of Dreadful Warning tales of an earlier generation, nor for the conduct of the war, nor for the subsequent frigid patriotism of writers like Rudyard Kipling. Right Off the Map fits clearly in spirit into the Aftermath culture of the 1920s. [JC]
Charles Edward Montague
born Twickenham, Middlesex: 1 January 1867
died Manchester, England: 28 May 1928
works
- Right Off the Map (London: Chatto and Windus, 1927) [limited edition nonpictorial: trade hb/P Youngman Carter]
links
previous versions of this entry