Includes bibliographical references and index.

Character of Hamlet's Mother -- Margaret Mead and the question of woman's biography -- Freud's daughters -- Vera Brittain's Testament of experience -- Winifred Holtby -- Virginia Woolf and James Joyce -- Virginia Woolf in her fifties -- What was Penelope unweaving? -- Marriage perceived -- To the lighthouse -- Alcott's Little women -- May Sarton's Mrs. Stevens Hears the mermaids singing -- May Sarton's memoirs -- Bringing the spirit back to English studies -- Women, men, theories, and literature -- Feminist criticism in departments of literature -- Presidential address -- Politics of mind -- Detective novel of manners -- Gender and detective fiction -- Sayers, Lord Peter, and Harriet Vane at Oxford.