The writings of Edith Wharton, Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf intersect with discourses of 'new women' and gender as well as feminism, and social and cultural history. This second level seminar develops historicist and generic understanding as well as exploring women's identity through these authors' writings, which move between realism and modernism. Special attention to just one writer is possible in the final essay. Particular attention will be given to some of Virginia Woolf's lesser known writing.