The ranks of English women writers rose steeply in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, contributing to the era’s revolutionary social movements as well as to transforming literary genres in prose and poetry. The phenomena of ‘the new’ — ‘New Women’, ‘New Unionism’, ‘New Imperialism’, ‘New Ethics’, ‘New Critics’, ‘New Journalism’, ‘New Man’ — are this moment’s touchstones. This book tracks the period's new social phenomena and unfolds its distinctively modern modes of writing. It provides expert introductions amid new insights into women’s writing throughout the United Kingdom and around the globe.

This book is a concise guide to British literature between 1880 and 1920. Part I consists of four essays which survey significant developments in the fiction, poetry, drama and non-fictional prose of the era. Part II consists of selective bibliographies of more than 170 authors, each with a list of primary and secondary works and a brief assessment of the author's place in the period.