Abstract:Katherine Cecil Thurston's novel, John Chilcote, MP (London: Blackwood, 1904), very quickly became "the novel of the season" across the English-speaking world, but the status and meaning of this popularity was not at all clear to contemporary readers and critics. This essay traces the reception of John Chilcote, MP and argues that its uncertain literary status is far from extraordinary in this period. The reception of the novel was transnational and thoroughly mediated, involving a set of negotiations between critics, readers and publishers about what kind of novel it was, and thus how it should be valued. These negotiations trouble any assumption of a clear-cut divide between the literary and the popular at the turn of the twentieth century, and suggest the ways in which reception and reading history can trouble literary-historical accounts of literary popularity and cultural hierarchy. This reception indicates a literary field, in the first decade of the twentieth century, in which a divide between high and low literature was often asserted by critics, but thoroughly blurred by the practices of publishers, the press, readers, and authors themselves.

中文翻译：

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凯瑟琳·塞西尔·瑟斯顿 (Katherine Cecil Thurston) 的约翰·奇尔科特 (John Chilcote)，议员：20 世纪初的流行和文学价值

摘要：凯瑟琳·塞西尔·瑟斯顿 (Katherine Cecil Thurston) 的小说，议员约翰·奇尔科特 (John Chilcote)（伦敦：布莱克伍德，1904 年）很快成为英语世界的“本季小说”，但这种流行的地位和意义尚不清楚。当代读者和评论家。这篇文章追溯了约翰·奇尔科特 (John Chilcote) 议员的接受程度，并认为其不确定的文学地位在这一时期远非非凡。这部小说的接受是跨国和彻底的，包括评论家、读者和出版商之间就它是什么类型的小说以及应该如何评价它进行的一系列谈判。这些谈判对二十世纪之交文学和流行之间存在明显分歧的任何假设都造成了困扰，并建议接受和阅读历史可能会给文学流行和文化等级的文学历史描述带来麻烦。这种接受表明了 20 世纪头十年的文学领域，在该领域中，评论家经常断言高雅文学与低俗文学之间的区别，但出版商、新闻界、读者和作者自己的做法却彻底模糊了这一点。