CLARE HANSON is Professor of English in the Department of English and Drama at Loughborough University. Her publications include Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield (ed.), Re-reading the Short Story (ed.), Short Stories and Short Fictions: 1990-1980, and Virginia Woolf.

'In her characteristically clear and knowledgeable introduction, Clare Hanson argues persuasively for the need to attend to the cultural status of fiction written by educated women, primarily for women as educated as themselves...Most interesting of all, is the unresolved tension, at the heart of all of the fiction she includes, between the notion of woman solely as the one who nurtures and the more complex possibilities afforded to the educated woman of the past hundred years.' - Kate Fullbrook, Times Literary Supplement

• Introduction Rosamond Lehmann and the Woman in Love Elizabeth Bowen: 'Becoming Woman' Elizabeth Taylor's Speaking Bodies Margaret Drabble: Natality, Labour, Work and Action A.S. Byatt's Gardens Anita Brookner: The Principle of Hope Bibliography Index