British Womens Writing from Brontë to Bloomsbury, Volume 3: 1880s and 1890s

This five-volume series, British Womens Writing From Brontë to Bloomsbury, 18401940, historically contextualizes and traces developments in womens fiction from 1840 to 1940. Critically assessing both canonical and lesser-known British womens writing decade by decade, it redefines the landscape of womens authorship across a century of dynamic social and cultural change. With each of its volumes devoted to two decades, the series is wide in scope but historically sharply defined.

Volume 3: 1880s and 1890s analyses confluences and developments in womens writing across two fin-de-siècle decades. Its 16 original essays reconsider fiction by canonical and lesser-known women writers, redefining the landscape of female authorship during these decades. By exploring womens fiction within the social and cultural contexts of the 1880s and 1890s, the collection distils in terms of womens writing how these decades discretely build on earlier work that is identifiably Victorian. The last two decades of the century, in distinctive ways, witnessed literary experiment, reflection on the limits of realism, and a fruitful sense of confusion about what was ending and what was about to begin.