In this exploration of the most innovative and iconoclastic modernist fiction, James J. Miracky studies the ways in which cultural forces and discourses of gender inflect the practice and theory of four British novelists: Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, May Sinclair, and D. H. Lawrence. Building on analyses of gender theory and formal innovation in Virginia Woolf's novels, this book examines Forster's queered use of fantasy, Sinclair's representation of manly genius in both male and female streams of consciousness, and Lawrence's quest for the novel of phallic consciousness. Reading each author's fiction alongside his or her theoretical writing, Miracky provides four diverse examples of how literary modernism wrestled with the gender crisis of the early twentieth century.

The Regen(d)eration of the British Modern Novel is a study of the ways in which the cultural forces and discourses of gender inflect the practice and theory of three modernist British novelists, E.M. Forster, May Sinclair and D. H. Lawrence. Building on previously explored interconnections between gender, theory and formal innovations in Virginia Woolf's novel writing, especially in Orlando, the author goes on to explore Forster's 'queered' use of fantasy, Sinclair's representation of 'manly genius' in both male and female streams of consciousness, and Lawrence's quest for the novel of 'phallic consciousness' as three diverse examples of how literary modernism wrestled with the 'gender crisis' of the early twentieth-century.