Is English literature since 1918 really such a man’s world?

A new book celebrating the best writing of the past century follows a well-worn script when it comes to equality

I’ve been dipping in and out of DJ Taylor’s fat new book, The Prose Factory, a pleasingly gossipy history of literary life in England since 1918, and so far as it goes, it’s very enjoyable: the bits about money certainly put the writers-must-be-paid-to-appear-at-festivals debate in some perspective. But still, I have to ask: where are all the women?

Taylor gives Virginia Woolf and Iris Murdoch quite a lot of attention. Also, for reasons that are perhaps less clear, AS Byatt, Margaret Drabble and Brigid Brophy. Edith Sitwell, Penelope Fitzgerald and Lorna Sage are treated sympathetically, and merit several paragraphs, as do a few others. But it’s the omissions that strike you, the many excellent and important female writers who are referred to only in passing, or not at all. Doris Lessing is mentioned just four times, and Muriel Spark and Angela Carter only twice; ditto Elizabeth Taylor. Among those left out entirely are: Sybille Bedford, Anita Brookner, Barbara Comyns, Olivia Manning, Antonia White and – this last truly amazes me – Stevie Smith.

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