Tracing the modernist aesthetic in the thought and writing of James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf, this book considers the cultural, social and personal influences upon the three writers.

Tracing the developing modernist aesthetic in the thought and writings of James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf, Deborah Parsons considers the cultural, social and personal influences upon the three writers. Exploring the connections between their theories, Parsons pays particular attention to their work on: forms of realism characters and consciousness gender and the novel time and history. An understanding of these three thinkers is fundamental to a grasp on modernism, making this an indispensable guide for students of modernist thought. It is also essential reading for those who wish to understand debates about the genre of the novel or the nature of literary expression, which were given a new impetus by the pioneering figures of Joyce, Richardson and Woolf.

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2007 "A clear, concise introduction to modernist views of the novel" J. W. Moffett, Kentucky Wesleyan College,forCHOICE magazine, Sep 2007, vol 45, no. 01,p. 374. "This one does an amazing job precisely because it manages to prepare readers without taking the sense of discovery away. Parsons is the kind of guide you want for an introduction of this sort: clear, focused, balanced, learned, and attuned to her audience's needs."--James Joyce Quarterly