Women Writers

Abstract

In this chapter the autobiographies of women who wrote for a living are examined. These autobiographies of professional wordsmiths will inevitably be qualitively different from autobiographies of amateurs in the field, and they raise interesting issues about the interrelation of ‘truth’, fact and fiction. These women novelists who were published in the period 1900 onwards participated at a time of great literary change. In a brief overview of the writing scene during the fin de siècle and Edwardian periods it is clear that, between the decline of the three-volume novel in 1895 and the outbreak of the First World War, fiction was the most important section of the leisure industry.¹ The development of a mass reading public increased the demand for books and made the Edwardian period a time of unprecedented literary activity. This was due, in part, to the cheaper price of a novel as it was no longer considered a luxury, and in part, to its size, as it was smaller and could be read in many places.²