"This is the seventh of ten volumes in a series that aims to give an integrated picture of British women writers' contribution to literature from the medieval period to the present day. ... the most interesting things about this volume is its emphasis on how women's writing from both the margins and the centre, from the local to the global, formed part of a wide cultural network of ideas and connections that contributed to turn-of-the-century feminism." (Patricia Beesley, Modern Language Review, Vol. 113 (2), April, 2018)
List of Figures.- Series Preface.- Acknowledgements.- Notes on the Contributors.- Chronology.- Introduction: a revolutionary moment; Holly A. Laird.- PART I: MODERN WOMEN.- From the New Woman to the Suffragette:.- 1. The (Irish) New Woman: political, literary, and sexual experiments; Tina O’Toole.- 2. Fin-de-Siècle Ouida: A New Woman writing against the New Woman?; Lyn Pykett.- 3. The New Woman in Wales: Welsh women’s writing, 1880-1920; Jane Aaron.- 4. British Women Writers, Technology, and the Sciences, 1880-1920; Lisa Hager.- 5. Mediating Women: Evelyn Sharp and the modern media fictions of suffrage; Barbara Green.- From the Decadent to the Queer:.- 6. Female Decadence; Joseph Bristow.- 7. Re-writing Myths of Creativity: Pygmalionism, Galatea figures, and the revenge of the Muse in Late Victorian literature by women; Catherine Delyfer.- 8. Venus in the Museum: Women’s representations and the rise of public art institutions; Ruth Hoberman.- 9. Women’s Nature and the Neo-Pagan Movement; Dennis Denisoff.- From the Nation to the Globe:.- 10. This Nation Which Is Not One: Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm; Holly A. Laird.- 11. Geographies of Self: Scottish women writing Scotland; Glenda Norquay.- 12. Modern Travel on the Fringes of Empire; Judy Suh.- 13. Women Writing Japan; Edward Marx.- PART II: MODERN GENRES.- From the Story to the Lyric:.- 14. New Women Writing Beyond the Novel: Short Stories; Margaret Stetz.- 15. Material Negotiations: Women writing the short story; Kate Krueger.- 16. Women’s Lyric, 1880-1920; Emily Harrington.- 17. Vigo Street Sapphos: The Bodley Head Press and women poets of the 1890s; Linda Peterson.- From Journalism to the War Memoir:.- 18. Women’s Slum Journalism, 1885-1910; S. Brooke Cameron.- 19. Turn-of-the-Century Women Writing about Art, 1880-1920; Meaghan Clarke.- 20. The British Female Detective Written by Women, 1890-1920; Joseph Kestner.- 21. Writing Modern Deaths: Women, war, and the view from the home front; Bette London.- Select Bibliography.- Index.-
Holly A. Laird is Frances W. O'Hornett Chair of Literature and Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Tulsa, USA. She is author of Women Coauthors and numerous articles on Victorian and modern literature, culture, and theory. She edited the prize-winning, international journal Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature for 18 years.
The ranks of English women writers rose steeply in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, contributing to the era’s revolutionary social movements as well as to transforming literary genres in prose and poetry. The phenomena of ‘the new’ — ‘New Women’, ‘New Unionism’, ‘New Imperialism’, ‘New Ethics’, ‘New Critics’, ‘New Journalism’, ‘New Man’ — are this moment’s touchstones. This book tracks the period's new social phenomena and unfolds its distinctively modern modes of writing. It provides expert introductions amid new insights into women’s writing throughout the United Kingdom and around the globe.