Abstract
For all of Edith Templeton's prosaic prowess, she has been neglected in Britain and the Czech Republic. The shadow cast over her early novelistic work might also be attributed to the subject matter, which is challenging to place and incorporate within the broader canon and the Jamesian style. In Britain, the difficulties associated with the subject matter are obvious as the highly detailed description of the First Republic society of Prague does not belong among milieus familiar to the common reader, but the case of Czech reception is much more peculiar. Explaining this resistance to Templeton's work poses a problem which might help us better understand her work.
This paper will argue that Templeton's early "Czech" novels, especially the novel Summer in the Country, failed to be assimilated into the Czech literary canon not just because they were published in English and written in a complex and lavish style but also because they provide a reading of Czech history that goes directly contra some of the more established narattives.
Furthermore, Templeton's stylistic choices can be read, with the help of Gayatri Spivak's concept of the Withholding, as reinforcing her particular historical portrait of the Czech interwar society, which helps us understand the resistance with which her work was met in the Czech Republic. This reading also has larger implications on the relationship between the Anglophone and Czech literary world, Templeton's work and the different techniques used by writers of minority literature.