This charts the emergence of British writers who assimilated the experimentation of the modernists in a realist tradition, also crafting their own distinctive literary voice. The essays in this volume cover a broad range of authors including George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh.

Orwell's fictions of the thirties, Peter Firchow; an aesthete in the foundry - Henry Green's "Living", Mary R Davidson; Anthony Powell's archetypal characters, Rosemary M. Colt; Evelyn Waugh's modernity, Alain Blayac; modernist in search of an audience - Graham Greene in the thirties, Barry Menikoff; running away from home - perpetual transit in Elizabeth Bowen's novels, Janice Rossen; in another country - Sylvia Townsend Warner at large, J. Lawrence Michell; the torment of loving - inter-war novels of Rosamond Lehmann, Judy Simons; the politics of exile - Christopher Isherwood, Kay Ferres; Christopher Isherwood - autobiography as mask, Bernard Benstock; brief biographies of important 1930's novelists.