Naomi Mitchison: A Writer in Time

Description

The first published collection of scholarship on Naomi Mitchison’s life and work, including a new, never-before-published short story by Mitchison The first collection of scholarly essays on Naomi Mitchison’s life and writing Deals with a broad sweep of Mitchison’s life and work, including her historical fiction, science fiction, travels in the USA and USSR, political activism, feminism, and writing for children Includes new research and archival scholarship by UK- and USA-based scholars of twentieth-century literature Features a new, never-before-published story by Mitchison based on her experiences as a delegate to an International P.E.N. conference in Zurich shortly after the Second World War As a novelist, feminist, socialist, activist, travel-writer, and diarist, Naomi Mitchison is one of Scotland’s most important yet understudied twentieth-century writers. This volume showcases the first collection of scholarly essays addressing her diverse literary work, including nine critical essays by scholars from the UK and the USA dealing with aspects such as spirituality, socialism, eugenics, war, the short story, science, feminism, mothering, and decolonisation. The volume also features ‘Europe’: a previously unknown story by Mitchison, here published for the first time. Aimed at students, scholars, and teachers of literature from undergraduate level upwards, it is an essential resource for anyone with an interest in Mitchison’s life and literary legacy. Contents Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction 1. Naomi Mitchison’s Interwar Short Stories 2. ‘She had her hand on the plow’: Shame, Uncertainty and Transformation in The Corn King and the Spring Queen 3. Varieties of Sexual Experience: Naomi Mitchison, Mysticism and Gerald Heard 4. Scientific Temporalities in We Have Been Warned and ‘Beyond This Limit’ 5. Send in the Clones? Naomi Mitchison and the Politics of Reproduction and Motherhood 6. From Argyll with Love: Naomi Mitchison and the Soviet Union 7. Fire or Blood? Aestheticising Resistance in Naomi Mitchison’s The Blood of the Martyrs 8. ‘The summoning urgent thing’: The Bull Calves and the Drive to Experiment at Mid-Century 9. Mitchison, Decolonisation and African Modernity Naomi Mitchison’s ‘Europe’ Europe Bibliography Index