The Literariness of Red Tape: Civil Service Periodical Fiction in Early-Twentieth-Century Britain

This article examines the literary dimension of early-twentieth-century British civil service periodical culture, focusing on the trade union journal »Red Tape: A Civil Service Magazine«, founded in 1911. The article shows that literary sketches featured in »Red Tape« during its first years in existence not only highlighted the difficult working conditions of civil service clerks but also addressed complex professional identity issues and promoted collegiality amongst civil servants. By investigating the ways in which »Red Tape« fiction served as an exploratory form of corporate self-expression, the article begins to delineate the distinctive properties of civil service periodical fiction.