Author Description

"These essays demonstrate that the 1940s and 1950s were not a dull or reactionary period for feminism and women's writing. They investigate notable 'literary' novelists - Elizabeth Bowen, Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing and Muriel Spark - alongside the hugely popular Nancy Mitford, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Pym, Vera Brittain, Agatha Christie and Rosemary Sutcliff. Collectively, the works reveal the pleasures and repressions of women writers and readers in this period as they negotiated with postwar ideals of femininity and domesticity. In addition to fiction - ranging from the historical to crime-writing - the book also discusses poetry, drama, adaptations of women's novels for television and cinema, and non-fiction."--Jacket.