Reappraising Jane Duncan

Scottish novelist Jane Duncan's semiautobiographical My Friends series was dismissed by postwar critics as lightweight, at a time when a coterie of "angry young men" monopolized the attention of the British publishing establishment. Yet deeper themes are at play in the 19 novels. Modern readers will recognize feminist motifs, a wide-ranging examination of women's education and work in the 20th century, a woman's view of the rising societal tensions of the 1920s and 1930s, and an outsider's persp