The Americans experienced great social change in the decade following World War I. They were restless, often discontented, searching for the good life--the one promised to the generation who, cheered on by patriotic slogans and propaganda, enlisted to fight on European battlefields. While young writers such as Hemingway and Fitzgerald romanticized the lives of Americans in postwar Europe and the U.S., a number of women authors in the 1920s looked through a darker lens. The novels of Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Margaret Wilson, Edna Ferber, Ellen Glasgow, Dorothy Scarborough and Dawn Powell--set mainly in the 19th century--searched the past for the origins of postwar upheaval, especially with respect to the status of women. Today, a few iconic male novelists of the 1920s are synonymous with the spirit and culture of the Jazz Age. This book focuses on their female contemporaries--largely neglected by both critics and readers--who remain relevant for their exploration of timeless social and psychological themes, the battle of the sexes and its tragic consequences.

Women of the 1920s led a revolt against the old standards of womanhood that were dominating US culture. Flappers and feminists, they spoke and acted out, inspiring other women to follow. This book analyzes the work of eleven important 1920s female authors who chronicled this revolt: Anzia Yezierska, Anita Loos, Mae West, Josephine Lovett, Nella Larsen, Mourning Dove, Djuna Barnes, Amy Lowell, Gertrude Stein, Bessie Smith, and Dorothy Parker. These trailblazers wrote counter-narratives to the sexism, racism, classism, and homophobia women faced during the Jazz Age. The author brings their novels, poems, plays, film scenarios, and blues lyrics into conversation with each other for the first time to show different approaches female readers could take to become autonomous individuals and full citizens. The works also encouraged readers to maintain supportive relationships with other progressive women. The author argues these works presented female readers with examples of how they could act individually and collectively to attain the political power, social status, economic independence, sexual freedom, and artistic recognition they deserved.

I'm not a racist, but... You look good, for your age... She was asking for it... You're crazy... That's so gay... Have you ever wondered why certain language has the power to offend? It is often difficult to recognize the veiled racism, sexism, ageism (and other –isms) that hide in our everyday discourse. This book sheds light on the derogatory phrases, insults, slurs, stereotypes, tropes and more that make up linguistic discrimination. Each chapter addresses a different area of prejudice: race and ethnicity; gender identity; sexuality; religion; health and disability; physical appearance; and age. Drawing on hot button topics and real-life case studies, and delving into the history of offensive terms, a vivid picture of modern discrimination in language emerges. By identifying offensive language, both overt and hidden, past and present, we uncover vast amounts about our own attitudes, beliefs and values and reveal exactly how and why words can offend.

The Americans experienced great social change in the decade following World War I. They were restless, often discontented, searching for the good life--the one promised to the generation who, cheered on by patriotic slogans and propaganda, enlisted to fight on European battlefields. While young writers such as Hemingway and Fitzgerald romanticized the lives of Americans in postwar Europe and the U.S., a number of women authors in the 1920s looked through a darker lens. The novels of Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Margaret Wilson, Edna Ferber, Ellen Glasgow, Dorothy Scarborough and Dawn Powell--set mainly in the 19th century--searched the past for the origins of postwar upheaval, especially with respect to the status of women. Today, a few iconic male novelists of the 1920s are synonymous with the spirit and culture of the Jazz Age. This book focuses on their female contemporaries--largely neglected by both critics and readers--who remain relevant for their exploration of timeless social and psychological themes, the battle of the sexes and its tragic consequences.

This companion to Victorian popular fiction includes more than 300 cross-referenced entries on works written for the British mass market. Biographical sketches cover the writers and their publishers, the topics that concerned them and the genres they helped to establish or refine. Entries introduce readers to long-overlooked authors who were widely read in their time, with suggestions for further reading and emerging resources for the study of popular fiction.

Focusing upon the 1950s, and especially the 1957 Wolfenden Report, Helen Self's study thoroughly exposes the sexual double standard and general misogynist assumptions underlying British legislation relating to prostitution.

Victorian Murderesses investigates the politics of female violence in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), George Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859), Mary Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), and Florence Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire (1897). The controversial figure of the murderess in these four novels challenges the assumption that women are essentially nurturing and passive and that violence and aggression are exclusively male traits. By focusing on the representations of murder committed by women, this book demonstrates how legal and even medical discourses endorsed Victorian domestic ideology, as female criminals were often locked up in asylums and publicly executed without substantial evidence. While paying close attention to the social, economic, judicial, and political dynamics of Victorian England, this interdisciplinary study also tackles the question of female agency, as the novels simultaneously portray women as perpetrators of murder and excuse their socially unacceptable traits of anger and violence by invoking heredity and madness. Although the four novels tend to undercut female power and attribute violence to adulterous women, they are revolutionary enough to deploy female characters who rebel against male sovereignty and their domestic roles by stabbing their rapists and even killing their newborns. Victorian studies on gender and violence focus primarily on female victims of sexual harassment, and real and fictional male killers like Dracula and Jack the Ripper. Victorian Murderesses contributes to the field by investigating how literary representations of female violence counter the idealisation of women as angelic housewives.

Keeping track of prolific authors who write fiction series was quite challenging for even the most ardent fan until To Be Continueddebuted in 1995. Noew, readers will be happy that the soon-to-be-released second edition has added 1,600 new books and 400 new series. To Be Continued, Second Edition, maintians the first volume's successful formula that featured concise A-to-Z entries packed with useful information, including titles, publishers, publication dates, genre categories, annotations, and subject terms. Among the genre categories that can be found in To Be Continued are romance, science fiction, crime novel, horror, adventure, fantasy, humor, western, war, Christian fiction, and others.