This book reconstructs the first two decades of the modern feminist magazine 'Time and Tide' and explores the periodical's significance for an interwar generation of British women writers and readers. Unique in establishing itself as the only female-run 'journal of opinion' in what press historians describe as the golden age of the weekly review, Time and Tide both challenged persistent prejudices against women's participation in public life, and played an instrumental role in redefining women's gender roles and identities. Drawing on extensive new archival research the book offers insights into the history and workings of this periodical that no one has dealt with to date, and makes a major contribution to the history of women's writing and feminism in Britain between the wars.
Catherine Clay is Senior Lecturer in English at Nottingham Trent University. She is author of British Women Writers 1914–1945: Professional Work and Friendship (Ashgate, 2006) and has published articles and book chapters on interwar women’s writing and women’s journalism. Her new monograph, Time and Tide: the Feminist and Cultural Politics of a Modern Magazine, is forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press.
Introduction: Time and Tide – Origins, Founders and AimsPart I: The Early Years, 1920–19281. A New Feminist Venture: Work, Professionalism, and the Modern Woman2. ‘The Weekly Crowd. By Chimaera’: Collective Identities and Radical Culture3. Mediating Culture: Modernism, the Arts, and the Woman ReaderPart II: Expansion, 1928–19354. ‘The Courage to Advertise’: Cultural Tastemakers and ‘Journals of Opinion’5. ‘A Common Platform’: Male Contributors and Cross-Gender Collaboration6. ‘The Enjoyment of Literature’: Women Writers and the ‘Battle of the Brows’Part III: Reorientation, 1935–19397. A New Partnership: Art, Money, and Religion8. A ‘Free Pen’: Women Intellectuals and the Public SphereWorks CitedIndex
Time and Tide is an endlessly fascinating magazine. Provocative and forward-thinking, it influenced debate on topics ranging from work and leisure to modernist art. Catherine Clay’s insightful, deeply knowledgeable study brings out the full importance of Time and Tide to British literary, political and feminist culture in the twentieth century.