Around 1940, with the rise of the teenager in America, there was also a rise in the female coming of age novel, a genre started by Jane Eyre but then largely forgotten. For the next 20 years also the genre became very popular, including both novels written for teenagers and novels written primarily for adults. Frances Booth’s monumental survey includes extended chapters on Shirley Jackson, Carson McCullers, Maude Hutchins, Rosamond Lehmann and Rosamond du Jardin, plus chapters on the teen novel, the lesbian coming of age novel and the tomboy in women’s fiction.
If you like Girls in Bloom, try: Killing the Angel: Early British Transgressive Women Writers
Francis Booth is the author of several other books on twentieth century culture:
• Amongst Those Left: The British Experimental Novel 1940-1960 (published by Dalkey Archive);
• Everybody I Can Think of Ever: Meetings That Made the Avant-Garde
• Text Acts: Twentieth Century Literary Eroticism
• Comrades in Art: Revolutionary Art in America 1926-1938