The History of British Women's Writing, 1945-1975 Volume Nine [Hardcover]

This volume reshapes our understanding of British literary culture from 1945-1975 by exploring the richness and diversity of womens writing of this period. Essays by leading scholars reveal the range and intensity of women writers engagement with post-war transformations including the founding of the Welfare State, the gradual liberalization of attitudes to gender and sexuality and the reconfiguration of Britain and the empire in the context of the Cold War. Attending closely to the politics of form, the sixteen essays range across literary, middlebrow and popular genres, including espionage thrillers and historical fiction, childrens literature and science fiction, as well as poetry, drama and journalism. They examine issues including realism and experimentalism, education, class and politics, the emergence of second-wave feminism, responses to the Holocaust and mass migration and diaspora.  The volume offers an exciting reassessment of womens writing at a time of radical social change and rapid cultural expansion.  Literature written between 1945-1975 does not fit easily into dominant critical paradigms, falling between the categories of modernism/ modernity and post-modernism/ post-modernity. However, recent criticism has begun to address this issue and to map the contours of an era which saw both rapid social change and radical literary innovation. This new volume in the History of British Women's Writing series will participate in this reassessment, drawing on new interpretive models which are illuminating the complexities of writing in this period. Moreover, the volume argues that a focus on women's writing, set firmly in its intellectual, material and cultural contexts, is central to defining the period 1945-1975 as a literary period or field of study.

Introduction- Clare Hanson and Susan Watkins.- 1. Post-War Fiction: Realism and Experimentalism: Kaye Mitchell.- 2. Lyric, Narrative andlw