Art and Womanhood in Fin-de-Siecle Writing:

The Fiction of Lucas Malet

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Catherine Delyfer

Gender and Genre

Lucas Malet is one of a number of forgotten female writers whose work bridges the gap between George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. Malet’s writing was intrinsically linked to her passion for art. Her novels reference contemporary paintings and her – often subversive – interpretations of them. The language of the visual arts is used as a literary device, disrupting the narrative structure and creating a deliberate stylistic tension.

This is the first book-length study on Malet’s novels. Four works are discussed, spanning her writing career; Mrs Lorimer (1882), The Wages of Sin (1890), The History of Sir Richard Calmady (1901) and The Survivors (1923). Delyfer’s analysis not only provides an insight into the development of Malet’s unique style, but demonstrates their importance in the development of Modernist female writing.

Readership

Victorian and Edwardian Literature, Women's Studies, Comparative Literature and Word and Image Studies

Contents

Introduction
1 Sketching in Black and White: A Poetics of the Inchoate
2 Portraying the Artist: Ekphrasis and the Art of the Miniature
3 Looking at Velasquez: Engendering Deviance
4 Malet's Iconoclasm: Wars, Mothers and the Birthing of the Female Writer
Conclusion

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