The essays in this volume on women's writing of the First World War are written from an explicitly theoretical and academic feminist perspective. The contributors - including a number of leading female academics - challenge current thinking about women's responses to the First World War and explore the differences between women writers of the period, thus questioning the very categorization of `women's writing'. The Great War stimulated a sudden growth in the novel industry. Well known writers such as Mrs Humphrey Ward and Edith Wharton found themselves jostled by authors like Ruby M. Ayres, Kate Finzi, and Olive Dent. The trauma of the war continued to reverberate through much of the fiction published in the years that followed its inglorious end. This volume considers some of the best known, and some of the least known, women writers on whose work the war left its shadow. The writing of some of the most famous 'modernist' women writers - including Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, and H. D. - is reassessed as war literature, and the work of long-neglected authors such as Vernon Lee, Frances Bellerby, and Mary Butts is given serious attention for the first time.
Reviews
It is a tribute to all the contributors to this book that I was left eager to read some of the more obscure or out-of-print texts mentioned, as well as relieved to encounter new themes in the analysis of better-known work. * Gail Braybon, War in History 2001 *
the collection moves into new and very productive territory ... immensely varied ... both thought-provoking and enjoyable. I was particularly impressed with the way the contributors place their subjects in their social, economic and emotional context, giving very valuable insights into the way the writers' environment influenced their opinion of the war. * Gail Braybon, War in History 2001 *
Women's Fiction and the Great War is an outstanding collection of essays. While each chapter combines thoughtful research with insightful argument, the book as a whole demonstrates the way different writers working in distinct genres experienced similar conflicts in the historical context of the First World War. * Kristine Miller, Clio *
This collection of twelve consistently well researched, historically rich, and often brilliantly argued essays represents both well-known writers ... and the most neglected ... this is a rich and intellectually challenging collection that provides thorough and perceptive accounts of women writers in an effort ... to renegotiate the space between their writing and the Great War ... all the essays in Women's Fiction and the Great War deserve our attention, and I would not hesitate to recommend this fine collection to any student of World War 1 - or of women's writing. * Karen L. Levenback, George Washington University, Woolf Studies Annual, Vol 5, 1999 *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198182788
Author Suzanne Raitt
Format Paperback
Page Count 300
Imprint Clarendon Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 136mm * 18mm