Feminism, Journalism and British Literary Culture, 1920-1945: A Study of Time and Tide

The proposed monograph, Feminism, Journalism and British Literary Culture 1920-1945: A Study of 'Time and Tide' will provide the first detailed study of a unique periodical which played a key role in the publication, reception and promotion of a network of critically neglected women writers in Britain during the period of literary modernism. Founded in 1920 by businesswoman and former suffragette Lady Margaret Rhondda, 'Time and Tide' began as an overtly feminist weekly review of politics and arts and later assumed a more literary identity which placed it at the heart of contemporary debates about art, politics, and questions of literary value. A key premise of the research is that the monolithic status of modernism has led to the marginalisation of a large number of women writers whose work does not fit modernist paradigms. Many of these writers were contributors to 'Time and Tide', a periodical which has itself been neglected in literary history.

A central aim of the research, therefore, is to reconstruct a material and cultural history of 'Time and Tide', and restore to visibility the networks of women writers who contributed to its pages during the years between 1920 and 1945. Further aims are to explore a number of alternative writing traditions which lived in critical and competitive dialogue with modernist writing in this period, and to recover the lost contributions of women writers and journalists to a wider dialogue about literature and culture in the age of modernism. Examining why and how 'Time and Tide' acted as a gravitational pull for so many different women writers of the era, the research posits that this periodical is a unique case-study for investigating the professional and literary labours of women writers working beyond the 'little magazines' associated with high modernism.

Key contexts for the research include the 'Rise of Periodical Studies' in modernist scholarship and a burgeoning scholarly interest in the 'middlebrow'. Contributing to literary scholarship in both these fields, the research will also recover little-known women writers on the literary left, as well as women writers whose work points to an under-explored set of connections between spiritualism, mysticism and surrealism between the wars. Primary materials for the research are the contents of 'Time and Tide' itself, and unpublished papers and records in archival collections, including the papers of 'Time and Tide''s literary editors in the late 1930s and 1940s, Theodora Bosanquet and C. V. Wedgwood.

The principal output of the research will be a monograph. Arranged in three parts the monograph will track 'Time and Tide''s development from its early feminist identity in the 1920s, its increasingly literary focus from 1928, and its 'new sociological outlook' from 1935. The monograph will examine the relationship between women writers and British literary culture under the following chapter headings: Professional Women and the Woman Journalist; Women Writers and Feminist Cultural Criticism; 'Time and Tide' and the 'Battle of the Brows'; 'Men and Books' and Female Culture; Radicals and Mystics and the Art/Politics Debate; Feminist Destinations in Wartime.

Potential beneficiaries of the research include:

BBC Radio 4, 'Woman's Hour'. This radio programme covers a wide range of current and historical woman-focused topics, and has a weekly reach of 3.31 million listeners. I was recently invited to take part in a discussion of 'Time and Tide' on this programme (broadcast 21 May 2010) and this will be followed up during the Fellowship with a proposal for an item on 'Time and Tide''s significance for a generation of 'lost' women writers of the interwar years.

The Women's Library, London. This library is the single most important archive in Britain for women's history; its holdings include issues of 'Time and Tide' dating from 1920 to 1929 as well as papers relating to some of this periodical's key figures. As well as offering reading room services, the library is also a registered museum and holds regular exhibitions attracting wide audiences. The research findings may well benefit the library's curators and archivists in developing and interpreting their collections.

Glasgow Women's Library. This registered museum and library receives over 50 visitors and callers each day and distributes a quarterly newsletter to more than 2,000 individual members and organisations. Given the links between 'Time and Tide' and early twentieth-century feminists active in Scotland, contact will be made to explore the possibility of an event to publicise the monograph which may be of interest to many of the library's users.

Persephone Books. This independent press 'publishes rediscovered inter-war novels, twentieth-century fiction and non-fiction by women writers' (Persephone Books website). With two bookshops in London (Bloomsbury and Kensington) it also has a 10,000 strong global mailing list. Persephone Books' best-selling author is Dorothy Whipple, a Yorkshire novelist who established her career during the interwar years and contributed short stories to 'Time and Tide'. Contact will be made with Persephone to inform them of my research and to suggest possible future titles.