Intricacies of Globality: The P.E.N. Club’s International Congresses 1923–1941

Abstract

The P.E.N. (Poets, Essayists, Novelists) Club was founded in 1921 to establish a literary network on a global scale. The interwar years, however, have been a debated period in regard to their global integration, and the P.E.N. Club has been portrayed as falling short of its ideal of globality. In analysing the association’s annual international congresses between 1923 and 1941, this paper proposes the factors of venue and representation to be most expedient in analyses of international institutions’ globality. I argue that the P.E.N. Club succeeded in overcoming economic and ideological backlashes to its globalising mission in the 1930s. Solely times of war proved to pose insurmountable hurdles to the interconnectedness of international cultural associations like the P.E.N. Club.