‘...a tremendous achievement...it resuscitates hundreds of authors and drives fresh pathways through the field’, Times Literary Supplement

This Companion examines the broad sweep of fiction-writing in the first decade and a half of the twentieth century, from 1900 to the outbreak of the First World War, a period when novels in Britain were produced more cheaply, and read more widely, than ever before. All of the classics of the period are explored: Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, Henry James's The Golden Bowl, E M Forster's A Room with a View, Conrad's Lord Jim, and D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. The Companion also surveys a huge variety of neglected and forgotten books, and covers genres such as spy fiction and feminist fiction, and institutions such as the suburb, the publishing trade, and the literary agent. Significant social developments and themes are examined in topic entries, which allow the reader to explore all the novels in a particular genre. Notably, women writers make up nearly half of the biographical entries, reflecting the unprecedented number of women who began to publish during the period.

Indispensable for students and lovers of literature, the Companion offers unique access to the works, writers, and preoccupations of this absorbing period in history.