Decadent Women: Yellow Book Lives

(Hardback)

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Description

During the 1890s, British women for the first time began to leave their family homes to seek work, accommodation, and financial and sexual freedom. Decadent Women is an account of some of these women who wrote for the innovative art and literary journal The Yellow Book. For the first time, based on original research, Jad Adams describes the lives and work of these vibrant and passionate women, from well-connected and fashionable aristocrats to the desperately poor. He narrates the challenges they faced in a literary marketplace, and within a society that overwhelmingly favoured men, showing how they were pioneers of a new style, living lives of lurid adventure and romance, as well as experiencing poverty, squalor, disease and unwanted pregnancy.

Reviews

'Part literary history, part social history, and entirely delightful, Decadent Women: Yellow Book Lives is a detailed, diverting, and accessible study of all the women who contributed to the groundbreaking fin-de-siecle magazine, showing how it made their careers even as they made it the bible of British decadence.' - David Weir, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, The Cooper Union, New York; 'An elegant and compelling study that will be essential reading for all those interested in The Yellow Book and the New Woman.' - Kate Hext, Associate Professor of Decadent Literature and the Arts, University of Exeter; 'Through superb storytelling . . . this is a book that reflects impressive scholarship and research, but that wears its scholarship lightly. It draws upon a wide range of biographical materials, both published and unpublished, including archives and letters, while also featuring, along the way, some illuminating close readings of texts by the featured women authors . . . I couldn't put it down!' - Margaret D. Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and Professor of Humanities, University of Delaware; 'This delightful and engaging book unfolds a much-needed account of the women connected to the Yellow Book and more widely the English fin de siecle. The author brings vividly to life this radical and experimental world, from which women, as so often, have been effaced, the importance of their contribution at best not recognized. Decadent Women provides a valuable corrective and an important addition to our picture of this 'decadent' world.' - Elizabeth Wilson, author of Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts and Unfolding the Past

Author Bio

Jad Adams is a Research Fellow at the Institute of English, School of Advanced Study, University of London. His many books include Women and the Vote: A World History (2014).