Modernism, Fashion and Interwar Women Writers

Provides in-depth case studies investigating early twentieth-century women novelists' engagement with contemporary fashion politics. Intervenes in and advances the study of literary modernism's relationship to consumer culture, middlebrow aesthetics, and the literary marketplace. Evidences the strong intellectual and professional connections existing among key women novelists of the interwar period. Draws on unexplored archival resources to offer new readings of canonical and lesser-studied women writers of the early 20th century.

Modernism, Fashion and Interwar Women Writers' demonstrates how five female novelists of the interwar period engaged with an emerging fashion discourse that concealed capitalist modernity's economic reliance on mass-manufactured, uniform-looking productions by ostensibly celebrating originality and difference.Mixing modernist outliers such as Edith Wharton and Agatha Christie with more canonical figures such as Virginia Woolf and arguing that these novelists shared an interest in negotiating the relationship between standardization and conformity, on the one hand, and novelty and individual expression, on the other, Modernism, Fashion and Women's Writing deliberately works against conventional notions of historical periodisation and challenges critical conceptions that pit modernist elitism against middlebrow consumerism as mutually defining opposites. It draws on previously unstudied material from these writers personal and professional archives to tell the stories of five women novelists who carefully negotiated commercial success and artistic autonomy in a marketplace that had made fashion one of its most significant yet often disclaimed inspirations and concerns.