Shirley Kossick
THE CAMBRIDGE GUIDE TO WOMEN’S WRITING IN ENGLISH edited by Lorna Sage (Cambridge University Press)
The material in this guide consists of over 2 500 entries – from a 300-strong panel of contributors – simply set out in alphabetical order under each author’s name. Key titles (such as Jane Eyre, To the Lighthouse and Alias Grace) also appear in the alphabetical listing, along with some genres, general literary terms and what the editor calls “large labels like ‘postmodernism'”.
The odd thing about the selection of these “large labels” is the conspicuous absence of any entry for feminism (feminist criticism or the Women’s Movement) whose many facets one may well have considered fundamental to a guide on women’s writing, especially given the make-up of the editorial team. Though the term is used liberally in various entries (for example, “right-wing feminism” in relation to Caryl Churchill’s To Girls, “Sixties feminism” under Weldon, Fay, and the “innovative feminist” writing of Mary Wollstonecraft), no definitions are offered. This omission is a pity, particularly when seen in contrast to the discernment and complexity of the detailed entries for “realism”, “modernist women” and “post-colonial”, to mention just a few of Sage’s “labels”.
Other omissions are equally puzzling, most notably the absence of many of the big guns in contemporary biography. The genre itself receives a long and excellent entry which explicitly acknowledges the vital contribution made by modern biography to the understanding of both the social history and the literary tradition of women.
Yet the only leading contemporary biographer to receive a mention is Margaret Forster, presumably by virtue of her fictional works. Yet Victoria Glendinning has also written fiction but been ignored, as have Claire Tomalin, Jennifer Uglow, Hermione Lee, Hilary Spurling and Frances Spalding.
But then, as Lorna Sage comments in her brief preface, “For everything that’s here, there’s a great deal that’s not: reference books may strive to be comprehensive and reliable, certainly this one has, but they can never be definitive …” Probably not, but this does not preclude regret for the exclusion of such fine novelists as Doris Grumbach, the undervalued Booker- shortlisted Madeleine St John, Charlotte Cory, Kate Atkinson and Esther Freud (in fact, the guide is rather weak on younger writers in general). In the modest style of Margaret Drabble, who left her own work out of The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Sage also excludes herself, though both advisory editors Germaine Greer and Elaine Showalter receive fairly full entries.
In a welcome departure from the usual practice, each entry has initials which can be checked against the list of contributors. This list itself, as Sage remarks, conveys “something of the diversity of the contemporary scene”, ranging from distinguished creative writers, critics, academics and literary journalists to lesser-known writers at the start of their careers.
This leads to a refreshing variety in approach, but also to a certain unevenness in quality. Some entries seem quite dated, for instance, as in the case of Edna O’Brien, where nothing later than 1982 is mentioned. Regrettably this neglects the surge of creative energy O’Brien has experienced since The High Road (1988), followed by Time and Tide (1992), House of Splendid Isolation (1994) and Down by the River (1996) – to say nothing of her James Joyce biography, her recent play (Our Father) and Wild Decembers, just published.
A similar criticism can be levelled at the entry for Alison Lurie, which ends at 1988, prior to the publication of her superb writing of the Nineties. One may mention her editorship of The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales, the short story collection, Women and Ghosts (1994), and a recent novel, The Last Resort (1998).
Though it is, of course, inevitable that a cut-off date needs to be established, many of the entries manage to consider works right up to the late Nineties. Many, too, are models of concision and informed opinion with valuable cross-references (the Atwood entry is a case in point). Despite some reservations, then, The Cambridge Guide to Women’s Writing in English is definitely a book worth owning and will be immensely helpful both to the serious scholar and to the interested lay reader.