Mary Butts: Necessary Contradictions and Feminist Reconstructions

(Paperback)

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A scholarly and experimental collection that offers fresh insightwith a feminist focusinto the often overlooked modernist writer Mary Butts and the contested processes of recovering such an author.

Scholars instrumental in the recovery of Mary Butts, along with newer writers, publishers, printers, and artists, enter into conversation exploring the work of the British author, whose body of work plays between high modernist forms and more popular genreswriting that can be described as occult, Gothic, queer, proto-environmental, and feminist. Taking its cue from Buttss experimental, rhythmic writing and the transnational artistic communities in which Butts moved in the 1920s, the collection is a non-linear exchange rather than a collection of isolated argumentsa conversation constructed from "classical" academic chapters, "knights move" non-academic reflections, and short responses to these.

This conversation lies at the intersection of "feminism" and "reconstruction": Chapters range between Buttss writing techniques and forms, her position in the modernist canon, contested sites of feminism in her work, critical reception of that work, queer and post-critical readings, and the success of, and the need for, a feminist recovery of the author. The collection aims to be a feminist engagement, while asking questions of what this might look like, why it is needed, and how such an approach offers fresh insight into an erudite, playful, difficult, contradictory, and experimental body of work. Ultimately, the collection asks, how should we reconstruct the author and her work for the contemporary reader

Reviews

Mary Butts is a remarkably complex writer, in turns fascinating and challenging, perspicuous and enigmatic, provocative and frustrating. This delightfully unconventional collection is the first to do full justice to the quality and range of her work, showing Butts to merit consideration alongside better-known modernists while also tackling head on the contradictions and prejudices that make her a difficult prospect for readers today. Bringing together academic voices with those from the world of publishing, book art and Buttss own milieu, Hawkes has created a rich and enormously rewarding volume which will interest and inspire new readers as well as those already familiar with Buttss work. * Suzanne Hobson, Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature, Queen Mark University of London, UK *
Mary Butts wrote marvellous prose shimmering, intractable, wayward, and piercing. Original in its range of content as in its design and never side-stepping difficulties, this impressive new collection demonstrates that Butts trenchant and extreme, bold and generous has become a voice we need more than ever to reckon with. * Ralph Pite, Professor of English, University of Bristol, UK *

Author Bio

Joel Hawkes lectures at the University of Victoria, Canada. His publications include The Collected Essays of Mary Butts (2021).