Women's Poetry of the 1930s: A Critical Anthology

by Jane Dowson (Editor)

Where were the women of the so-called `Auden Generation'?During this era of rapidly changing gender roles,social values and world politics,women produced a rich variety of poetry.But until now their work has largely been lost or ignored;in Women's Poetry of the 1930s Jane Dowson finally redresses the balance and recovers women's place in the literary history of the interwar years.This comprehensive and beautifully edited collection
*Previously uncollected poems by authors such as Winifred Holtby and Naomi Mitchison
*Poems which are now out of print,such as those by Vita Sackville-West and Frances Cornford
*Poems previously neglected by poets including Ann Ridler and Sylvia Townsend Warner
*An extensive critical introduction and individual biographies of each poet
Poetry lovers,students and scholars alike will find Women's Poetry of the 1930s an invaluable resource and a collection to treasure.

Genres: Poetry

214 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 1995

Reviews

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raising up great obscure things is one of the main points of having academics around. However, half the poets in this actually refused to be segregated in their lifetime (that is, refused to be anthologised as women, or at all). Dowson is candid about this, and half the book is just suggestive little biographies as a result.

She is shackled to the humanities' chaste, hyper-qualified prose ("I have tried to illustrate that through their interrogations of national and international affairs, their preoccupations with cultural politics and their experiments with language and form... rejects the language of centrality and dominance...") and their fear of judgment / love of equivocation ("If consensus over a 'good poem' is neither desirable nor possible, then value is largely determined by context..."), it's not exactly hateful.

Whether through Dowson's bias or the necessities of the time, these poets are even more independent than their male counterparts. Of those selected, Stevie Smith and Edith Sitwell are already fully reclaimed as the canonical boss ladies they are. Two big oversights of mine: Naomi Mitchison and Sylvia Townshend Warner. Mitchison is amazing - wise when wounded, droll and passionate, politicised but never journalistic: check out "To Some Young Communists", "Woman Alone", "Old Love and New Love". Warner is both blunt and metaphysical. (Others are just passable. Vita Sackville-West's are surprisingly poor, in fact. Highlights: "Beauty the Lover's Gift?" (bitter objectification); "Pastoral" (Manly Hopkins after empire). "A Woman Knitting" (the infinite in the finite); "Song of the Virtuous Female Spider" (satirising pious motherhood clichés); "The Sick Assailant" (rare for the time: male violence focus); "On August the Thirteenth" (on abruptness, gentle impotence of human pretensions).

Multiplicative.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

*only for collection of Valentine Ackland*