They can be objects of romance or harbingers of doom. They can provide plot twists, shocks, horror, comedy or character. Now the role of the telephone in literature, from the 19th century to the present day, is being celebrated in an online exhibition, Crossed Lines.
Readers of books, plays and poems were invited to send in their favourite references to telephones in literature, and almost 100 examples, from the earliest models to smartphones, were submitted from across the world.
Sarah Jackson, associate professor in English at Nottingham Trent University, said the project had captured the imagination of both literature and technology enthusiasts, and struck a chord at a time when people were reliant on phones and other devices to communicate. “It has been wonderful to see the range of nominations coming in,” she said.
The earliest example featured is The Telephone, a piece by the American transcendentalist poet Jones Very composed in 1877, just months after Alexander Graham Bell was awarded his patent. “The human voice speaks through the electric wire!” he wrote.
There are also early appearances of the phone in Mark Twain’s 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. The time-travelling hero, Hank, uses a phone to get one over on a wizard and his child is named Hello-Central, a reference to a 19th-century telephone operator.
Writers including Agatha Christie, Muriel Spark and JB Priestley use the phone in their work to great effect, and more than a century after its first appearance, its use is still going strong. Anna Burns, in her feted 2018 novel, Milkman, writes brilliantly about how the phone was mistrusted by many during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, because of its association with “dirty tricks, unofficial party-line, state-surveillance campaigns”.
Sometimes, of course, phones are used in a humorous manner. In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the young wizard Ron Weasley, unfamiliar with “muggle” devices, calls it a “fellytone” and believes he has to shout loudly to be heard.
The telephone is important in Mike Leigh’s play, Abigail’s Party, not only for the plot line but as an object. Laurence and Beverly’s is a Trimphone (Tone Ringer Illuminated Model), the sort of state-of-the art design that may have appealed to those aspiring to the middle classes.
One of Jackson’s favourite examples is Jean Cocteau’s monodrama La Voix Humaine. First performed in 1930, it uses the telephone to explore the relationship between technology, intimacy and the human voice. “Not only does the telephone serve as a last-ditch lifeline for a spurned lover, it is also the conduit to the action,” Jackson said.
The Spanish film-maker Pedro Almodóvar shot a new version of the drama during lockdown starring Tilda Swinton, who uses a smartphone and ear buds.
Jackson argues that the exhibition, which is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, is an apposite one for a world separated by coronavirus. “I think the telephone has the capacity to facilitate connections across times, places and cultures. And in the specific context of our second lockdown, the exhibition invites literature lovers to reflect on the role of the telephone in our attempts to stay connected.”
