This volume of new writings has a double purpose: to question Auden's description of the 1930s as a 'low dishonest decade' and to draw attention to the richness, complexity and diversity of women's writing of the period and how this deals with issues of politics, gender and history. The writers discussed include Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth Bowen, Katherine Burdekin, Nancy Cunard, Storm Jameson, Rosamond Lehmann, Naomi Mitchison, Jean Rhys, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Rebecca West and Virginia Woolf. Key Features * A clear and informative introduction by Maroula Joannou sets the writers in historical and literary context * The essays deal with Modernist texts as well as traditional modes of writing, and with neglected and well-known writers * An important challenge to the ways in which the literature of the 1930s has been traditionally understood which questions the myth of the Auden generation * Brings together a range of distinguished contributors all of whom are experienced university teachers who all contribute new research