Women, Literature, and the Arts of the Countryside in Early Twentieth-Century England by Judith W. Page and Elise L. Smith (review)

Focusing on eight writers and artists, this book examines the centrality of the countryside to women’s work, creativity, and aspirations in early twentieth-century England. The authors introduce us to figures who should be better known today: educators, artists, novelists, poets, and memoirists. Divided into four parts, with foci on professions and education, the transformation of the countryside, arts and crafts, and dislocation and loss, this book by a literature scholar and an art historian brings an interdisciplinary perspective, providing a unique view of women’s responses to such major issues of the twentieth-century as war, industrialization, modernist ideology, and gender. From Mary Watts’s remarkable pottery to Beatrix Potter’s work as a children’s author and environmentalist to Dora Carrington’s haunting paintings and Vita Sackville-West’s Sissinghurst Castle Garden, this book challenges readers to rethink the early twentiethcentury through the lens of their work.