In a climate of new rights and opportunities at the beginning of the 20th century, Dowson (De Montfort U., Leicester) argues, British women became significant public poets and literary figures
while running printing presses and bookshops, editing magazines, and writing criticism. She considers their work as examples of rear-guard modernism, a conservative modernity that is not
formally adventurous but represents women's simultaneous internalization and rejection of contemporary idealizations of femininity. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
