"This collection covers the six years Mrs. Parker wrote a monthly theatre column, first for Vanity Fair, from 1918 to 1920, and then on Ainslee's, from 1920 to 1923"--Page xv.

Women of the 1920s led a revolt against the old standards of womanhood that were dominating US culture. Flappers and feminists, they spoke and acted out, inspiring other women to follow. This book analyzes the work of eleven important 1920s female authors who chronicled this revolt: Anzia Yezierska, Anita Loos, Mae West, Josephine Lovett, Nella Larsen, Mourning Dove, Djuna Barnes, Amy Lowell, Gertrude Stein, Bessie Smith, and Dorothy Parker. These trailblazers wrote counter-narratives to the sexism, racism, classism, and homophobia women faced during the Jazz Age. The author brings their novels, poems, plays, film scenarios, and blues lyrics into conversation with each other for the first time to show different approaches female readers could take to become autonomous individuals and full citizens. The works also encouraged readers to maintain supportive relationships with other progressive women. The author argues these works presented female readers with examples of how they could act individually and collectively to attain the political power, social status, economic independence, sexual freedom, and artistic recognition they deserved.

Concise discussions of the lives and principal works of American writers, thinkers, and cultural figures, written by subject experts.

An annual biographical dictionary, with which is incorporated "Men and women of the time."

Alphabetically-arranged entries present brief biographical sketches of more than 1,000 American women of the past and present who achieved renown in a wide range of fields of endeavor.