West End Women: Women and the London Stage 1918 - 1962

West End Womenis an attempt to identify and reposition the work of a number of women playwrights whose work was produced on the London Stage between 1918-1962. Women like Dodie Smith, Clemence Dane, Aimee Stuart and Esther McCracken were at one time household names as well as being famed within the theatre of their day. This book sets out to analyze their work in the context for which it was created; a time in which both women's lives and the British theatre, were transformed by war, cultural change and a change in their status within the public domain. As such, the plays are examined in relation to social, cultural and ideological developments and change, which particularly affected both women's lives and the perception of what it meant to be a woman.