British Women Writers and the Public Sphere between the Wars: Winifred Holtby, Storm Jameson, Naomi Mitchison, and Rebecca West

Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London 2002This thesis exammes how Winifred Holtby, Storm Jameson, Naomi Mitchison and Rebecca West appropriated the political ideas of the interwar period into their fiction and sought to transform abstract ideals into values with which to judge and improve social life. For all four writers, this pursuit takes the form of showing the complex relations beween theory and practice as experienced by particular individuals. My premise here is the idea that political ideals are based upon the moral principles used by persons to guide their conduct in the pursuit of individual and collective happiness