Women's fiction, poetry, drama and nonfiction represent the complex nexus of continuity and change in the British consciousness following the Second World War. These essays restore the cultural and literary significance of women as readers and writers, examining their various transmutations of international, national and domestic politics. The women-centered writing illuminated in this collection also enhances the tradition-in-process of twentieth-century women's literature. Writers discussed include Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing, Muriel Spark, Agatha Christie and Stevie Smith.