Country Matters in The Little (Southern Steel) Company

Abstract

In "On Appropriation: Two Novels of Dark and Eldershaw," Ian Saunders identifies a number of similarities between Eleanor Dark's The Little Company (1945) and Barnard/Eldershaw's Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1947), and makes the case that Dark borrowed much of the structure and plot of her novel from an outline Marjorie Barnard provided (287). My aim here is neither to defend nor support Saunders's claim (although I do think he weakens his case by ignoring information included in Barbara Brooks's biography, which indicates conclusively that much of the material in The Little Company stems from Dark's family background), but to suggest that Dymphna Cusack, too, might have gathered some of her ideas from Dark in writing Southern Steel (1953).