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Book Synopsis''Make this your next inspirational read. Trust us, it's Oprah's Book Club worthy'' ViceIn London in 1958, a play by a 19-year-old redefined women's writing in Britain. It also began a movement that would change women's lives forever. The play was
A Taste of Honey and the author, Shelagh Delaney, was the first in a succession of young women who wrote about their lives with an honesty that dazzled the world. They rebelled against sexism, inequality and prejudice and in doing so challenged the existing definitions of what writing and writers should be. Bypassing the London cultural elite, their work reached audiences of millions around the world, paved the way for profound social changes and laid the foundations of second-wave feminism. After Delaney came Edna O'Brien, Lynne Reid-Banks, Charlotte Bingham, Nell Dunn, Virginia Ironside and Margaret Forster; an extraordinarily disparate group who were united in their determination to shake the traditional concepts of wo
Trade ReviewWriters who changed lives.
Rebel Writers is a startling new approach to literary criticism - not just what was done, but why it had to be done - mingled with astute social history. All sorts of things we should know but don’t know about the sixties, all smoothly and elegantly written and as readable as any novel. Six writers to whom we owe a debt of gratitude, all in their own ways sowing the seeds of how we live today. Marvellously interesting! -- Fay Weldon
Make this your next inspirational read. Trust us, it’s Oprah’s Book Club worthy. * Vice *
Brayfield's equally illuminating book homes in on the late 1950s and early 1960s, revealing that (Shelagh) Delaney wasn't the only one showing that female experience was about more than just falling in love... Brayfield offers us perceptive analysis of the writing and ratifies these women's position in the canon in the process. Perfect companion volumes,
Tastes of Honey and
Rebel Writers make for entertaining, edifying and important reading. * Financial Times Weekend *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Part One: Seven Writers 1. Innocence and Experience 2. A Man’s World: Sexism 3. Forbidden Kisses: Class 4. All False: Love 5. ‘I Wish I Had a Career’: Aspiration 6. The Great Unmentionable: Sex 7. Drowning in Delight: Motherhood 8. A Rotten Bargain: Marriage 9. Good Old John: Race 10. Before the Urban Family: Friendship
Part Two: Out into the World 11. ‘Where is your Baby?’ 12. Losing It at the Movies: Screen Adaptation 13. A Stain Upon Womanhood 14. The Angry Young Men: The Literary Movement That Never Was 15. Backwards in High Heels: Success And After 16. We Were Pioneers
Epilogue Endnotes Bibliography Acknowledgements Index
