The Radical Twenties

Book excerpt: Studies writers from the 1920s with regard to their political radicalism. Draws on the works of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Patrick Hamilton, among others, to identify the decade as a time of both political activism and of deliberately transgressive behavior, particularly among women. Meets head-on the argument of earlier commentators who take for granted the post-war decade as defined by cynicism and hedonism, and looks at the work and lifestyles of those determined to find ways out of despair. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR