Women in Transit through Literary Liminal Spaces

Anna Despotopoulou, University of Athens, GreeceValerie Fehlbaum, University of Geneva, SwitzerlandShannon Russell, John Cabot University in Rome, ItalyRebecca D'Monté, University of the West of England, UKTerry Gifford, University of Alicante, SpainDaniela Kato, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, ChinaEmma Short, Newcastle University, UKFrances Piper, University of Salford, UKNiamh Downing, University College Falmouth, UKTeresa Gómez Reus, University of Alicante, SpainJanet Stobbs Wright, University of CEU Cardenal Herrera in Elche, Spain

• INTRODUCTION PART I: NEW WOMEN, OLD PATTERNS 1. 'Nobody's child must sleep under Somebody's roof – and why not yours?': Adventures of the Female Ego in Dickens, George Meredith's The Egoist and Wilkie Collins's No Name; Shannon Russell 2. 'Dangerous Domestic Secrets' on Trial in The Law and the Lady by Wilkie Collins; Janet Stobbs Wright 3. 'Running on lines': Women and the Railway in Victorian and early Modernist Culture; Anna Despotopoulou 4. Stepping Out: 'At Home' or 'From our Own Correspondent'? The Lady Writer or the Woman Journalist?; Valerie Fehlbaum PART II: THE CALL OF THE WILD 5. 'I write the truth as I see it:' Unsettling the Boundaries of Gender, Travel Writing and Ethnography in Isabella Bird's Unbeaten Tracks in Japan; Daniela Kato 6. Early Women Mountaineers Achieve Both Summits and Publication in Britain and America; Terry Gifford 7. Racing to the Front: Auto-mobility and Competing Narratives of Women in the First World War; Teresa Gómez Reus PART III: REDRAWING THE BOUNDARIES 8. 'Always Coming and Going': The In-Between Spaces of Elizabeth Bowen's Early Novels; Emma Short 9. Moving Back to 'Home' and 'Nation': Women Dramatists, 1938-1945; Rebecca D'Monté 10. Spatial Parody, Theatricalisation and Constructions of 'Self' in Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt and Carson McCullers' The Ballad of the Sad Café; Frances Piper 11. 'Fritillary Fever': Cultivating the Self and Gardening the World in the Writing of Clara Coltman Vyvyan; Niamh Downing

Teresa Gómez Reus and Terry Gifford's edited collection is a timely book, which provides an extremely valuable account of women's negotiations with spaces in transit in the work of women writers between the Victorian age and the 1950s. The collection suggests new ways of thinking about women and space in a range of texts, successfully structured in three sections which are indebted to Arnold Van Gennep's stages of rites of passage. Undoubtedly, Gómez Reus and Gifford's volume will become essential reading for those interested in the field of gender and spatial studies.Rosario Arias, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Málaga, Spain