A History of Twentieth-Century British Women's Poetry

An invaluable and detailed critical analysis and record of a lively but undervalued literary community.

Jane Dowson (Author), Alice Entwistle (Author)

9780521121415, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 15 October 2009

404 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.59 kg

"This is a commendable book and is scrupulously researched throughout. The extensive bibliograhpy alone will prove an invaluable resource to subsequent scholars." - William May, Balliol College, Oxford University

A History of Twentieth-Century British Women's Poetry offers a detailed evaluative documentary record of the publications, activities and achievements of a lively but undervalued literary community. Part literary history, part critical analysis, this comprehensive survey is organised into three historical periods (1900–45, 1945–80 and 1980–2000), each part introduced by a comprehensive overview in which the emerging names are mapped against cultural, literary and poetic events and trends. Individual essays reflect and stimulate continuing debates about the nature of women's poetry and cover a range of canonical and lesser-known, but significant, poets. They offer critical approaches to reading poems that engage with, for example, war, domesticity, modernism, linguistic innovation, place, the dramatic monologue, postmodernism and the lyric. A chronology and detailed bibliography of primary and secondary sources covering over 200 writers make this an invaluable reference source for scholars and students of British poetry and women's writing.

Chronology
Introduction
Part I. 1900–45: Overview
1. Lyrical androgyny: Alice Meynell, Frances Cornford, Vita Sackville-West and Elizabeth Daryush
2. A public voice: war, class and women's rights
3. Modernism, memory and masking: Mina Loy and Edith Sitwell
4. 'I will put myself, and everything I see, upon the page': Charlotte Mew, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Anna Wickham and the dramatic monologue
Part II. 1945–80: Overview
5. Stevie Smith
6. The post-war generation and the paradox of home
7. The poetry of consciousness-raising
8. Disruptive lyrics: Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Wendy Mulford and Denise Riley
Part III. 1980–2000: Overview
9. 'These parts': identity and place
10. Dialogic politics in Carol Ann Duffy and others
11. Postmodern transformations: science and myth
12. The renovated lyric: from Eavan Boland and Carol Rumens to Jackie Kay and the next generation.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC]