Edwardian Companion

ELT 41 : 3 1998 out regressing into a standard marital relationship. In part, Miller suggests , this change arose from Wells's relationship with Elizabeth von Arnim—a provocative claim that deserves more attention, although Miller does not provide fully worked out proof. The section on May Sinclair provides a fitting ending for the book; as Sinclair's concern lay foremost with fictional form, Miller shows how Sinclair provided the bridge between the innovations in content made by the Edwardian writers studied here and the formal experimentation that would follow in modernist works. Rebel Women makes its argument in a lucid, engaging way, without tiresome rhetoric and with a good body of evidence from the novels it addresses . Miller's great strength here is the efficient way in which she contextualizes the novels according to the trends of the time. She might have done more to set up the continuities between Edwardian reactionism and the misogyny of many male modernists, since her topic involves depictions of women; also, Miller makes very little mention of lesbians and lesbianism, although fear of "inversion" certainly provided some of the misogynistic (and anti-suffragist) energy of the time. In the same vein, Miller might have spent a little more time discussing the influence of Jane Eyre, which was obviously significant on later works by women and men alike. Yet one is heartened to find a critical discussion of women and fiction that treats many less-familiar women's writings on their own terms. With its attention to an overlooked period of early twentieth-century literature and to woman-centered fiction during the crucial prewar period of feminist movement, Rebel Women should prove indispensable to literary scholarship in modern British fiction. Jayne Marek Franklin College of Indiana Edwardian Companion Sandra Kemp, Charlotte Mitchell, David Trotter, eds. Edwardian Fiction : An Oxford Companion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. xxxi + 431 pp. $39.95 EDWARDIAN FICTION: An Oxford Companion is a valuable addition to scholarship on the period, although it needs to be used with great caution. The very existence of this substantial book gives the Edwardian period a kind of significance it has often been denied, subsumed as it is so often into accounts of modernism or the tail-end of Victorianism . To hold thi 3 book is to know that the Edwardian period was, in every 352 BOOK REVIEWS sense, weighty. The volume has some imaginative categories, eminently readable type, and lots of fascinating cross-references, which make it almost impossible to put down. Start with G. K. Chesterton, and you may be intrigued to discover that Chesterton's sister-in-law is also in the volume under the name "John Keith Prothero." Look up "Prothero," and you find out she protested against the libel law by using well-known authors' names in her fiction, including "George R. Sims"—whom you may look up in turn to find out the details of a wide-ranging journalistic, poetic, and social-activist career . Such connections are irresistible, and mean that even if you start out trying to use Edwardian Fiction as a straightforward reference work, you inevitably find yourself browsing through its pages, intrigued by heretofore unseen links and unknown writers. Edwardian Fiction's thematic entries are especially useful. They cover major events, like the Boer War, and prominent genres and interests , like "Ruritarian romance," "suburban fiction," "invasion scare stories ," "literary agents." These listings help us make unexpected connections, offer a gold-mine of bibliographic references, and reveal overarching paradigms. Edwardian Fiction's emphasis on noncanonical writers also makes it a marvelous source for references and ideas. For instance , the page with Samuel Butler also lists B. M. Butt, a writer of socialist and Boer War stories, and Henry Byatt, a playwright. Because Edwardian Fiction is so admirable in its aim, scope, and organization , it is painful to have to add that the volume also has serious problems. Each time I found myself browsing through the book, my initial excitement subsided into depression regarding the volume's plethora of careless errors. How can one use all this new information when it is so likely to be wrong? Even a cursory reading reveals mistakes virtually everywhere. Here are a...