New woman fiction: women writing first-wave feminism

The New Woman was the symbol of the shifting categories of gender and sexuality and epitomised the spirit of the fin de siècle .

This informative monograph offers an interdisciplinary approach to the growing field of New Woman studies by exploring the relationship between first-wave feminist literature, the nineteenth-century women's movement and female consumer culture.

The book expertly places the debate about femininity, feminism and fiction in its cultural and socio-historical context, examining New Woman fiction as a genre whose emerging theoretical discourse prefigured concepts central to second-wave feminist theory.