Early Works by Modern Women Writers: Woolf, Bowe, Mansfield, Cather, and Stein

“In this substantive, groundbreaking study … the authors fulfill the promise of their abstract. They do indeed show how the early works of five American and British women authors are predictive of the later bodies of work; and equally important, they use the early works of these five authors to compose a definition of modernism … This is a fresh and original approach, and one that every reader of modern fiction will want to have; one that every reader of women’s literature will particularly enjoy. By valuing the works of women modernists, the authors help to solidify the place of women writers in literary history, and thereby invite new generations of women authors to open those doors, to create their own voices and works.” – Marilyn Kallet, Hodges Chair for Distinguished Teaching, University of Tennessee

“This book emphasizes early works by these authors [Woolf, Bowen, Mansfield, Cather, and Stein] in order to show how the authors’ creative reactions to modern problems helped these women to discover modernist techniques for themselves and to continue working out, throughout their careers, the personal solutions that helped them get started as the kinds of writers we now call modernist … This study relates fictional texts to the authors’ lives without an excessive reliance on merely biographical readings … Drs. Landon and Smith remind us why modernism mattered when it came into being and remind us of some reasons that it still matters a great deal. In this sense, the book is equally useful to a scholarly audience and to an audience of students …” – Professor Marshall Bruce Gentry, Georgia College & State University

Table of Contents:
Abbreviations
Preface by Mary M. Brown
Acknowledgements
I. Virginia Woolf: Beginnings
II. Elizabeth Bowen
III. Katherine Mansfield
IV. Willa Cather
V. Gertrude Stein
VI. Virginia Woolf: In the House of Modernism
Works Cited
Bibliography
Index

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