Mary Butts was an important figure in inter-war modernist circles and one who reviewed and associated with some of the major literary figures of the era, from T.S. Eliot to Gertrude Stein. Despite her importance and the varied nature of her writing, she has been a neglected figure in modernist scholarship. Providing a new analysis of the interwar literary period, Mary Butts and British Neo-Romanticism revisits her work - vividly experimental writings spanning memoir, poetry, polemic and fiction - through the lens of mid-20th-century British neo-Romanticism. The book argues that behind Butts's eco-feminist writings lies an intricate political and philosophical commentary.
Considers the eco-feminist fiction of the inter-war British writer Mary Butts in the context of the neo-Romantic movement of the mid-Twentieth Century.
Andrew Radfordis a lecturer in the School of Critical Studies, Glasgow University, UK. His publications includeMapping the Wessex Novel: Landscape, History and the Parochial in British Literature, 1870-1940(Continuum, 2010) andThomas Hardy and the Survivals of Time(2003).
Introduction
1. The Rescue of Romanticism? Landscaping the Mystic Self in The Crystal Cabinet
2. Ashe of Rings: Subverting the 'Country House' Genre
3. The Taverner Novels and the Secret History of Albion
4. 'Another Kind of Seeing': Re-visioning the Historical Novel
5. The Bohemian Borders of Modernism in the Short Stories
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index