Women's Fiction

Deborah Philips is Professor of Literature and Cultural History at the University of Brighton, UK. Her books include Fairground Attractions (2012), The Trojan Horse (2013) with Garry Whannel and Brave New Causes (1999) with Ian Haywood.

• Acknowledgments1. Introduction2. What Did Women Want?: Post-War Masculinity in the Woman's Novel of the 1950s3. 'Mothers Without Partners': the Single Mother Narrative of the 1960s4. She's Leaving Home: the 'College Girl' Narrative of the 1970s5. Shopping as Work: the Sex and Shopping Novel of the 1980s6. Keeping the Home Fires Burning: the Aga Saga of the 1990s7. Shopping for Men: the Single Woman Narrative8. Resentful Daughters: the Post-Feminist Novel?9. Shopping for Meaning: The Spiritual Quest10. Having It All: Work and MotherhoodAfterwordBibliographyIndex

Her study will be welcomed by many women who have also read and enjoyed 'middlebrow' novels alongside 'highbrow' counterparts. It reveals the cultural currency of feminine popular fictions, and elucidates the pleasures they offer, without denying their occasionally serious limitations.