Tuesday, January 1, 2013

British & Irish Women Writers of Fiction 1910-1960 (Key & Citations)

For more information about this list, please see the introduction, linked below.

You can download the entire list in a single PDF. Clicking on the link below will open a Google Docs page displaying the entire list in PDF. To save a copy of the PDF, just click on the little down arrow in the upper left. You can also print the list from the Google Docs page, but be warned that it now weighs in at 544 pages!


[Current total: 2,391 writers]

UPDATED 2/29/2024

KEY TO THE LIST

In order to pack as much information as possible, as efficiently as possible, into each entry, this new version of the list includes some formatting changes and shorthand notations that may require explanation.

I've added complete life and death dates where available. I've also placed last names first, in keeping with the format of most reference works. I've also fleshed out authors' full names when I have them, while still trying to reflect the shortened names they may have published under. I've used parentheses to reflect the complete form of a nickname or shortened name that was used for writing, and brackets to reflect middle or other legal names which an author didn't use for their publications. An example:

BARNE, [MARION] KITTY (CATHERINE)

This entry for novelist and children's author Kitty Barne (the name she published under) also reflects that her full formal name was Marion Catherine Barne.

I also use brackets to show full names for authors who used only initials on their books, as with this example:

HAVERFIELD, E[LEANOR]. L[UISA].

Although the brackets and parentheses can look confusing at first, hopefully they will become intuitive. In a few cases where the names are particularly complicated, I've left a fuller explanation either in a parenthetical second line or in the text of the author's entry.

There are a number of instances in which master researcher John Herrington has been able to trace authors in the public records with a fair degree of certainty but without any absolute proof that the person he's located is the author. In those cases, I have used question marks to precede each bit of information that can't be absolutely verified and have added an "uncertain but probable identification" note. In a few other cases where the situation is more complex but the pieces of information might provide clues to future researchers, I've included a summary of what John found within the author's entry.

I've added a "dates active" line for each author, which specifies the decades in which the author published fiction. This seemed useful for readers or researchers looking at particular time periods within the 50 years the list covers. Note that authors may have published other non-fiction works earlier and/or later than their "dates active" range. The "dates active" reflect only the decades in which they published fiction.

Wherever possible, I've included complete listings of each author's fiction titles. "Wherever possible," in this case, generally means authors who published 10 novels or fewer, or a bit more if an author is particularly significant or interesting. I've used a sort of shorthand to indicate whether title listings are complete or not—"titles are" or simply a dash following the number (i.e. "wrote five novels—") indicate that the titles following are complete, while "titles include" or just "including" indicate that only a selection of titles is shown. I also give exact numbers of works of fiction in most cases, so it should usually be obvious whether the titles shown are complete or not.

Finally, when an author who has her own entry on the list is mentioned in another writer's entry, her last name is shown in all caps (i.e. "co-wrote one novel with Betty SMITH"). This allows for easier cross-referencing within the list. Names of authors or other individuals who do not have entries on this list are shown with standard capitalization.


ABBREVIATED CITATIONS

There are a handful of sources that I have cited and/or quoted within the list on multiple occasions, and it has seemed less clunky to abbreviate the citations. These are:

Jenny Hartley = Jenny Hartley, Millions Like Us: British Women's Fiction of the Second World War (1997), London: Virago, 1997.
OCEF =  Kemp, Sandra, Charlotte Mitchell, and David Trotter, The Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
ODNB = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (see here)
Orlando Project = The Orlando Project (see here)
Sims & Clare = Sue Sims and Hilary Clare, The Encyclopedia of Girls' School Stories, Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2000.

Other sources referred to are identified within each entry.


If you see anything else about the formatting or content of the list that is not clear, please let me know.

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