Before you leave...
Take 20% off your first order
20% off
Enter the code below at checkout to get 20% off your first order
Discover summer reading lists for all ages & interests!
Find Your Next Read

Explores the trailblazing work of the British literary avant-garde of the 1960s
This collection showcases the liveliness of British avant-garde fiction of the 1960s, which is diverse in its aesthetic practices and (sometimes) divided in its politics. It brings together a selection of original, research-led essays on more than a dozen avant-garde British writers of the 1960s, revealing this to be a crucial - and crucially overlooked - period of British literary history.
Via detailed readings of authors such as Ann Quin, B.S. Johnson, Alexander Trocchi, Maureen Duffy, Alan Burns, Christine Brooke-Rose and many others, the contributors reveal the diversity of material produced in this period and trace the complex relations of influence and indebtedness between the 60s avant-garde, earlier modernisms and later postmodern writing. The volume shows that the 1960s is an even more vibrant period of literary experiment in Britain than might previously have been supposed - and that the avant-garde fiction produced then rewards our renewed attention to it.
Key Features:
Provides much-needed critical analyses of the work of 60s avant-garde writers Offers focused essays - each presents one author in their cultural/critical/historical contexts - by experts in the fieldRecuperates a lost decade in British literature and thus fills a vital gap in literary history, between late modernism and early postmodernismResponds to burgeoning critical and popular interest in authors such as Christine Brooke-Rose, Ann Quin, and B.S. Johnson, and to a widespread interest in experimental and innovative writing more generally
Kaye Mitchell is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature and Director of the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester. She has published three monographs, most recently Writing Shame: Contemporary Literature, Gender and Negative Affect (2020). Her editorial publications include a collection of essays on the British author Sarah Waters (2013), a special issue of Contemporary Women's Writing (2015) on experimental women's writing, and a co-edited collection of essays (with Nonia Williams), British Avant-Garde Fiction of the 1960s (2019). Kaye is the UK editor of the journal Contemporary Women's Writing, is on the editorial board of Open Gender in Germany and C21 in the UK, and is a series editor of Bloomsbury's 'Contemporary Critical Perspectives' series.
Nonia Williams is a Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia. Recent publications include '(Re)turning to Quin: An Introduction' in Women: A Cultural Review (2022); '"Designing its Own Shadow" tracing Ann Quin's reiterative experimental processes' (2021); 'About/Of Madness: Ann Quin's The Unmapped Country' in Textual Practice (2020) and British Avant-Garde Fiction of the 1960s (EUP, 2019).
Thanks for subscribing!
This email has been registered!
Take 20% off your first order
Enter the code below at checkout to get 20% off your first order