British Interwar Women WritersClass, Gender, Genre
£95.00
About this book
Uncovers the intimate connections that existed between interwar women writers’ political affiliations and their aesthetic decisions
- Features chapters on well-known writers, including Sylvia Townsend Warner and Elizabeth Bowen, as well as marginalised figures, such as Ellen Wilkinson and Amabel Williams-Ellis
- Reads literary texts through an organisational lens, situating interwar women’s writing in the context of contemporary debates about class and gender and their own work as political and social activists
- Presents new material from personal, organisational and periodical archives
British Interwar Women Writers explores the relationship between the political and literary commitments of five women writers – Sylvia Townsend Warner, Ellen Wilkinson, Rosamond Lehmann, Elizabeth Bowen and Amabel Williams-Ellis. The book has two aims. Firstly, to offer more precisely contextualised accounts of these writers’ class and gender politics by situating their treatment of maternity, marriage, work, sex and domesticity in terms of contemporary socio-political debates, as well as their own involvement with organisations like the Labour Party, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes and the Communist Party of Great Britain. Secondly, by focusing on their shared preference for mid-and-low-status genres, such as romance and thrillers, and exploring the potential of cross-generic close readings, the book shows how these writers’ work with genre was responsive to, and in some cases contiguous with, their extra-literary commitments and political engagements.
Reviews
Combining an expansive understanding of the political with the precision of archival research, Clara Jones’s brilliant, nuanced and incisive book is an exciting contribution to modernist studies. Jones reads interwar women authors with acumen and sensitivity, writes about them in a style both crisp and engaging, and shows the generative potential of a feminist approach.
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Politics of British Interwar Women’s Writing
1. Experiences of a Lady Worker: Class and Labour in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s 1920s Fiction
2. Trouble in the House: Ellen Wilkinson’s Clash (1929) and The Division Bell Mystery (1932)
3. ‘Much too ladylike’: Amabel Williams-Ellis’s Feminist Materialism
4 ‘A point of view I feel strongly about’: The Politics of Domestic Life in Rosamond Lehmann’s Interwar Writing
5. Elizabeth Bowen at the Women’s Institute
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index