The Early Novels of Ivy Low: Literature, Love, and Lust in 1910s London

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the early literary career of the writer Ivy Low. Low’s work and literary friendships of this period offer a rich source of insight into the contradictions and challenges of British literary culture in the early 1910s, especially for a young woman of Jewish descent eager to belong to a new generation of writers. The article examines Low’s two early novels Growing Pains (1913) and The Questing Beast (1914). The novels continue existing literary traditions of the Victorian and Edwardian era while at the same time being determinedly modern if not Modernist in outlook. Low’s psychologically honest explorations of women’s sexual feelings and descriptions of women in the workplace supplement the more conventional subjects of marriage, education, religion, and art, as well as a vivid portrait of the process of becoming a published author. Drawing on archival autobiographical writing, the article explores how Low’s initially promising career becomes increasingly problematic as she grows more aware of barriers of class and race which make her an outsider despite her close friendship with the writer Viola Meynell and D. H. Lawrence’s early interest in her.