Modern British Women Writers: An A-to-Z Guide

The 20th century witnessed enormous social, economic, and political changes and gave birth to several cultural movements, including modernism, anti-modernism, and postmodernism. These and other ways of perceiving and understanding a sometimes tumultuous world fostered a rich body of literature marked by generic and stylistic experimentation. With the rise of feminism and a greater concern for the issues facing women, the experiences of the 20th century were responded to most vigorously by women writers. This reference is a guide to the lives, works, and achievements of British women writers of the 20th century. The volume includes alphabetically arranged entries on 58 writers. Some of these writers were born in England, while others, such as Katherine Mansfield and Doris Lessing, came from countries of the former Empire or Commonwealth. So too, the volume includes entries for women of colour, such as Kamala Markandaya and Buchi Emecheta. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and contains an overview of the writer’s background, an analysis of her major works, and an assessment of the critical response to her writings. The entries close with primary and secondary bibliographies, and the volume concludes with a selected, general bibliography.