Into the Interior Book

An H.G. Wells in a Virago Classic edition? You heard right. The first novel from Wells exploring the New Woman movement in the 1900s, i.e. the proto-proto-feminist movement, the first flush of the suffrage movement (the other, The New Machiavelli is not as interesting), was a scandalous revelation at the time, showing a woman with a craving for independence and self-determination rebelling against her fustian father. The novel crackles with a sense of mischief and righteous irritation as the marvellous Ann Veronica veers from scientific studies and a manless world of female segregation, to a world of feminine love and feminine intelligence, and something approaching equality. The melodramatic conclusion aside, Ann Veronica is one of the most significant pre-feminist novels written by a male author (one of the few?), and a stonking read with a stonking female protagonist at the helm.