The Woman's Historical Novel British Women Writers, 1900-2000

by Wallace, Diana

• ISBN13: 9781403903228
• ISBN10: 1403903220
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-03-02
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

In the first major study of British women writers' use of the historical novel, Diana Wallace tracks its development across the twentieth century. She combines a comprehensive survey with detailed readings of key writers, including Naomi Mitchison, Georgette Heyer, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Margaret Irwin, Jean Plaidy, Mary Renault, Philippa Gregory and Pat Barker.

Author Biography

Diana Wallace is Lecturer in English at the University of Glamorgan, where she teaches women's writing. She is the author of Sisters and Rivals in British Women's Fiction, 1914-39 (Macmillan, 2000).

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgements	xiii
Introduction	1	(24)
The historical novel: history and criticism	8	(7)
A maternal genealogy: Sophia Lee's The Recess (1783)	15	(5)
The masqueraders: cross-writing, gender, costume	20	(5)
Entering into History: The Woman Citizen and the Historical Novel, 1900---1929	25	(28)
Gender as masquerade: Georgette Heyer's mask of romance	35	(8)
Remembering the conquered: Naomi Mitchison's anti-imperialist fictions	43	(10)
Histories of the Defeated: Writers Taking Sides in the 1930s	53	(25)
Rooted in geography: Phyllis Bentley's regional historical fiction	62	(7)
The writer as sniper: Sylvia Townsend Warner	69	(9)
Writing the War and After: Wicked Ladies and Wayward Women in the 1940s	78	(23)
`Trespasser in time': Daphne du Maurier's historical sense	88	(6)
The new Elizabethans: Margaret Irwin's family romances	94	(7)
Hollow Men and Homosexual Heroes: Exploring Masculinity in the 1950s	101	(24)
Ancient history: Mary Renault's dialogic histories	108	(9)
A lost leader: H.F.M Prescott's The Man on a Donkey (1952)	117	(8)
The Return of the Repressed: Maternal Histories in the 1960s	125	(25)
Captive women: `Jean Plaidy' and `Victoria Holt'	133	(9)
Chess games: Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles	142	(8)
Selling Women's History: Popular Historical Fiction in the 1970s	150	(26)
The `self-experienced' past: Catherine Cookson's social histories	159	(8)
`Merlin was me': Mary Stewart's Arthurian trilogy	167	(9)
`Herstory' to Postmodern Histories: History as Dissent in the 1980s	176	(26)
Popular fictions: Philippa Gregory's Marxist-Feminist novels	186	(8)
Postmodern histories: Rose Tremain and Jeanette Winterson	194	(8)
Dialogues with the Dead: History and the `Sense of an Ending' 1990--2000	202	(25)
Ventriloquising the past: A.S. Byatt's romance with history	210	(9)
Hystorical men: Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy	219	(8)
Postscript	227	(2)
Notes	229	(8)
Bibliography	237	(19)
Index	256