May Sinclair (1863-1946) was a bestselling novelist who was one of the first British women to go out to the Belgian front in 1914. May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian draws on newly discovered manuscripts to tell the story of this woman whose emotional isolation bears witness to the great price Victorian women had to pay for their intellectual freedom.

The essays in this volume on women's writing of the First World War are written from an explicitly theoretical and academic feminist perspective. The contributors - including a number of leading female academics - challenge current thinking about women's responses to the First World War and explore the differences between women writers of the period, thus questioning the very categorization of `women's writing'. The Great War stimulated a sudden growth in the novel industry. Well known writers such as Mrs Humphrey Ward and Edith Wharton found themselves jostled by authors like Ruby M. Ayres, Kate Finzi, and Olive Dent. The trauma of the war continued to reverberate through much of the fiction published in the years that followed its inglorious end. This volume considers some of the best known, and some of the least known, women writers on whose work the war left its shadow. The writing of some of the most famous 'modernist' women writers - including Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, and H. D. - is reassessed as war literature, and the work of long-neglected authors such as Vernon Lee, Frances Bellerby, and Mary Butts is given serious attention for the first time.

The Great War stimulated a sudden growth in the novel industry, and the trauma of the war continued to reverberate through much of the fiction published in the years that followed its inglorious end. The essays in this volume, by a number of leading critics in the field, consider some of the best-known, and some of the least-known, women writers on whose work the war left its shadow.

Katherine Hilbery, torn between past and present, is a figure reflecting Woolf's own struggle with history. Both have illustrious literary ancestors: in Katherine's case, her poet grandfather, and in Woolf's, her father Leslie Stephen, writer, philosopher, and editor. Both desire to break away from the demands of the previous generation without disowning it altogether. Katherine must decide whether or not she loves the iconoclastic Ralph Denham; Woolf seeks a way of experimenting with the novel for that still allows her to express her affection for the literature of the past.
This is the most traditional of Woolf's novels, yet even here we can see her beginning to break free; in this, her second novel, with its strange mixture of comedy and high seriousness, Woolf had already found her own characteristic voice.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Orlando, a novel loosely based on the life of Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf's lover and friend, is one of Woolf's most playful and tantalizing works. This edition provides readers with a fully collated and annotated text. A substantial introduction charts the birth of the novel in the romance between Woolf and Sackville-West, and the role it played in the evolution and eventual fading of that romance. Extensive explanatory notes reveal the extent to which the novel is embedded in Woolf's knowledge of Sackville-West, her family history and her writings. Thorough annotation of every literary and historical allusion in the text establishes its significance as a parodic literary and social history of England, as well as a spoof of one of Woolf's favorite forms, the biography. It also includes all variants from the extant proofs, as well as editions of the novel produced during Woolf's lifetime.

When Virginia Woolf first met Vita Sackville-West at Clive Bell's home in 1922, she wrote that Vita made her feel 'virgin, shy, & schoolgirlish'. But over the next three years Vita charmed away her shyness, and at the end of 1925 made Virginia her lover. Vita and Virginia examines the creative intimacy between the two women, interpreting both their relationship and their work in the light of their experience as married lesbians. The contradictions and conflicts of their situation are worked out through the construction of different narratives of femininity, in letters, novels, diaries, and other texts. The book discusses the two women's continual renegotiation of what it means to be female, and suggests that the mutual exchange of different versions of womanhood is crucial to the development of their friendship. Vita and Virginia offers innovative readings of both women's fiction, their autobiographical texts, and a long-overdue study of Sackville-West's work as a biographer and novelist. Emphasizing wider contexts, Suzanne Raitt assesses the links between homosexual desire and literary innovation, public politics and private lives. Her work provides an invaluable new perspective on the relations between sexuality and feminism in modernism.

A generous "Contexts" section provides extracts from Woolf's diaries and letters as well as comments on the novel from her fellow writers and friends, among them E. M. Forster and T. S. Eliot. Also included are the short stories "The Mark on the Wall," "Kew Gardens," and "An Unwritten Novel," which Woolf viewed as early experiments with the innovative method used in Jacob's Room. An additional short story, "A Woman's College from Outside," which Woolf originally intended to be Chapter 10 of Jacob's Room, is also included. Finally, Woolf's classic essay "Modern Novels," written shortly before she began work on Jacob's Room, provides insight into her aesthetic and technique. "Criticism" is divided into two sections: "Contemporary Reception and Reviews" contains personal responses to the novel, from Lytton Strachey and E. M. Forster, as well as eleven reviews from contemporary periodicals. "Critical Essays" offers insightful interpretations by Judy Little, Alex Zwerdling, Kate Flint, Kathleen Wall, and Edward L. Bishop. A Selected Bibliography is also included.