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Interwar women's comic fiction: 'have women a sense of humour?'

Research Output: Book/Report Edited book Peer-review

Open access

Abstract

This collection of essays examines the work of five intermodernist writers. Some were established authors before the First World War and others continued to write after the Second World War, but this book focuses particularly on their writing between 1918 and 1939. Stella Benson, Bradda Field, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Stella Gibbons and Winifred Watson had much in common: they all wrote novels full of comic moments, which often challenged the cultural politics of the interwar period. Drawing on the literary and critical contexts of each novel, the essays here discuss the use of comic structures that enabled the authors to critique the dominant patriarchal structures of their time, and offer an alternative, sometimes subversive, view of the world in which their characters reside. This book contributes to the growing scholarly interest in interwar fiction, focusing principally on novelists who have fallen out of public view. It widens our understanding both of the authors and of the continuing, highly topical debate about interwar women novelists.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Book/Report Edited book Peer-review

Original language

English

Publication milestones

  • Published - 01/02/2020

Publication status

Published - 01/02/2020

Place of publication

Newcastle upon Tyne

Publisher

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

ISBN (Print)

9781527542741

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/623824

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