Women, Literature, and the Arts of the Countryside in Early Twentieth-Century England

ISBN-13: 9781108491150 / Angielski / Twarda / 2021 / 274 str.

Judith W. Page (University of Florida);Elise L. Smith

Opis

Focusing on eight writers and artists, this book examines the centrality of the countryside to women's work, creativity, and aspirations in early-twentieth-century England. The authors introduce us to figures who should be better known today: educators, artists, novelists, poets, and memoirists. Divided into four sections, with foci on professions and education, the transformation of the countryside, arts and crafts, and dislocation and loss, this book by a literature scholar and an art historian brings an interdisciplinary perspective, providing a unique view of women's responses to such major issues of the twentieth century as war, industrialization, modernist ideology, and gender. From Mary Watts's remarkable pottery to Beatrix Potter's work as a children's author and environmentalist to Dora Carrington's haunting paintings and Vita Sackville-West's Sissinghurst Castle Garden, this book challenges readers to rethink the early twentieth century through the lens of their work.

Recenzje

'In the early twentieth century, the English countryside was a site of nos-talgia and continuity as well as a place of considerable change. In Women, Literature, and the Arts of the Countryside in Early Twentieth-Century England, Judith Page and Elise Smith have written a fascinating account of this tension and of the role played by landscapes, gardens, and the natural world across a range of media, both visual and literary' Kate Flint, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature

Spis treści

Part I. Transforming Lives: Gardening Education, Environmental Activism, and the Professional Woman: 1. Frances Garnet Wolseley and the Rise of the Professional Woman Gardener; 2. Realism and Romance: Beatrix Potter's Natural Worlds; Part II. The Transformation of the Countryside: 3. 'Planted . . . in the Right Soil': Finding a Home in Two Novels by Edith Nesbit; 4. To Every Field There is a History: Flora Thompson's English Countryside; Part III. The Arts and Crafts of the Garden: 5. 'A Rising Stream of Life': Nature as Ground and Spirit in the Art of Mary Watts; 6. Dora Carrington's 'Phantom' Geography and the 'Crisis' of her Landscapes; Part IV. Redeeming the Waste Land: Dislocation, Loss, and Ruin: 7. 'The Garden Abides': Marion Cran and Wartime Memoirs of Life in the Garden; 8. Castle and Rose: Vita-Sackville West and the Redemption of Sissinghurst; Epilogue.