The History of British Women's Writing, 1880-1920

"This volume brilliantly captures the vibrancy and diversity of this remarkably energetic period in British literature. The twenty-one contributors shift the focus away from a 'break' at 1900 in favour a sense of continuity, in the process forging productive and enlightening connections between women writers across generational and geographical boundaries." (Sarah Parker, Loughborough University, UK) "A tour de force as an edited collection that maps British women writers' contributions to the turn-of-the-twentieth century as a millennial moment of transformative historical and literary change." (Ann Ardis, University of Delaware, USA)

The phenomena of ‘the new’ — ‘New Women’, ‘New Unionism’, ‘New Imperialism’, ‘New Ethics’, ‘New Critics’, ‘New Journalism’, ‘New Man’ — are this moment’s touchstones.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.