'Readable and provocative' OBSERVER 'The scope and variety on display here should satisfy any reader interested in great literature' SCOTSMAN 'An immaculately and exhaustively researched overview of women's writing' FINANCIAL TIMES '"A writer for every year of the 20th Century': delving into its impressive list of Modern Classics, in Brilliant Careers the feminist publishing house Virago has come up with a new literary anthology of women's writing. From Miles Franklin, the representative of 1901, to Grace Paley, the writer of 2000, from Katherine Mansfield (1915) to Nell Dunn(1963), these brief extracts from 100 novels and short stories--and the even shorter, but informative, biographies that accompany them--offer the reader a glimpse into what the editors describe as a "female tradition in fiction". For anyone who wants to know who was writing when in the 20th century, for a reader keen to develop a sense of the scope of modern women's writing, Brilliant Careers is an invaluable resource: its obvious use is as a literary map of the expanding terrain of women's fiction and, in particular, a guide to the role played by Virago in uncovering and republishing that fiction. At the same time, as with any anthology that reproduces extracts from longer works, there is a type of frustration built into the experience of reading: the passages included here are often very short--4-6 pages on average--while the editorial Introduction says little about the literary and cultural contexts of the 20th century that frame these women's writings. Nevertheless, there's enough here to tantalise a browser into wanting to read more as well as to underline the importance of keeping this fiction in print and available to the general reader.' - Vicky Lebeau, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW

KASIA BODDY is a literary critic and lecturer.ALI SMITH is a novelist and short-story writer.SARAH WOOD is a writer and filmmaker.