Sarah Grand was one of the most prominent New Women of the 1890s and a notable social purity feminist and suffragist. This collection offers important insights into the full range of her journalistic output and lesser-known fictional writings. It also makes available biographical and autobiographical material, and previously unpublished manuscript sources. The first volume reproduces Grand's articles and the contemporary critical reception of her work. The letters in volume two, written mostly in the 1920s and 1930s, shed light on Grand's (...) genesis as a writer and her interaction with 1890s artistic and feminist circles. The third and fourth volumes contain a selection of short stories from three collections published at and after the turn of the century. These comment on some of the explosive issues of that time: feminism, decadence, eugenics, class, race and war. They also reflect Grand's exploration of the interplay between gender and genre. (shrink)

This anthology contextualizes key feminist texts and ideas by linking them with the transformation of public opinion brought about by the late Victorian debate on marriage, motherhood and women's right to an independent life. Included are Mona Caird's controversial The Morality of Marriage ; debates between feminists, traditionalists and anti-feminists on marriage, divorce and the New Woman, and selected reading from New Woman fiction, both feminist and anti-feminist, which reproduces the media debate on morality in literature.