The Feminist New Age

Perhaps the best-known among modernist-era magazines, the British socialist weekly The New Age (edited by A. R. Orage from 1907 to 1922) is often mischaracterised as 'anti-feminist' or 'anti-suffragist'. Yet in its early years, this book argues, The New Age served as a crucial forum for feminist fiction and debate – largely thanks to the contributions of Beatrice Hastings and Katherine Mansfield. Too often, Hastings is relegated to a biographical footnote, and Mansfield’s early fiction, if read at all, is divorced from its periodical context. As the first book-length examination of the feminist content of The New Age and of these two writers, this study establishes Hastings’ importance to early twentieth-century women’s history and literary culture, while enriching our understanding of the feminist debates that shaped Mansfield’s writings. Recovering periodical debates concerning marriage, motherhood, citizenship and sexuality, this book expands our sense of pre-war modern feminism.