Suzanne Raitt – författare

May Sinclair's 1904 novel, The Divine Fire, made her a household name in both Britain and the US. From then on she was a prominent figure in many of the literary and cultural movements of her day. A committed if ambivalent feminist, she published in the suffragist journal Votes for Women, and was one of the first women in England to go out to the Belgian front in 1914. Towards the end of her active life, she wrote the celebrated modernist novel, Mary Olivier: A Life (1919), and the dense, macabre Life and Death of Harriett Frean (1922). May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian, the first book to appear on May Sinclair in nearly thirty years, draws on newly discovered manuscripts to tell the story of this woman whose emotional isolation bears witness to the great price Victorian women had to pay for their intellectual freedom.

The essays in this volume on women's writing of the First World War are written from an explicitly theoretical and academic feminist perspective. The contributors - including a number of leading female academics - challenge current thinking about women's responses to the First World War and explore the differences between women writers of the period, thus questioning the very categorization of `women's writing'. The Great War stimulated a sudden growth in the novel industry. Well known writers such as Mrs Humphrey Ward and Edith Wharton found themselves jostled by authors like Ruby M. Ayres, Kate Finzi, and Olive Dent. The trauma of the war continued to reverberate through much of the fiction published in the years that followed its inglorious end. This volume considers some of the best known, and some of the least known, women writers on whose work the war left its shadow. The writing of some of the most famous 'modernist' women writers - including Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, and H. D. - is reassessed as war literature, and the work of long-neglected authors such as Vernon Lee, Frances Bellerby, and Mary Butts is given serious attention for the first time.

The essays in this volume on women's writing of the First World War are written from an explicitly theoretical and academic feminist perspective. The contributors - including a number of female academics - challenge current thinking about women's responses to the First World War and explore the differences between women writers of the period, thus questioning the very categorization of 'women's writing'. The Great War stimulated a sudden growth in the novel industry. Well known writers such as Mrs Humphrey Ward and Edith Wharton found themselves jostled by authors like Ruby M. Ayres, Kate Finzi, and Olive Dent. The trauma of the war continued to reverberate through much of the fiction published in the years that followed its inglorious end. This volume considers some of the best known, and some of the least known, women writers on whose work the war left its shadow. The writing of some of the most famous 'modernist' women writers - including Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, and H. D. - is reassessed as war literature, and the work of long-neglected authors such as Vernon Lee, Frances Bellerby, and Mary Butts is given serious attention for the first time.

Katherine Hilbery, torn between past and present, is a figure reflecting Woolf's own struggle with history. Both have illustrious literary ancestors: in Katherine's case, her poet grandfather, and in Woolf's, her father Leslie Stephen, writer, philosopher, and editor. Both desire to break away from the demands of the previous generation without disowning it altogether. Katherine must decide whether or not she loves the iconoclastic Ralph Denham; Woolf seeks a way of experimenting with the novel for that still allows her to express her affection for the literature of the past. This is the most traditional of Woolf's novels, yet even here we can see her beginning to break free; in this, her second novel, with its strange mixture of comedy and high seriousness, Woolf had already found her own characteristic voice. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A generous “Contexts” section provides extracts from Woolf’s diaries and letters as well as comments on the novel from her fellow writers and friends, among them E. M. Forster and T. S. Eliot. Also included are the short stories “The Mark on the Wall,” “Kew Gardens,” and “An Unwritten Novel,” which Woolf viewed as early experiments with the innovative method used in Jacob’s Room. An additional short story, “A Woman’s College from Outside,” which Woolf originally intended to be Chapter 10 of Jacob’s Room, is also included. Finally, Woolf’s classic essay “Modern Novels,” written shortly before she began work on Jacob’s Room, provides insight into her aesthetic and technique.“Criticism” is divided into two sections: “Contemporary Reception and Reviews” contains personal responses to the novel, from Lytton Strachey and E. M. Forster, as well as eleven reviews from contemporary periodicals. “Critical Essays” offers insightful interpretations by Judy Little, Alex Zwerdling, Kate Flint, Kathleen Wall, and Edward L. Bishop.A Selected Bibliography is also included.