This book offers a challenging analysis of British women's literature of the 1930s and 1940s in which they debated the "justness" of a complex range of pacifist and activist roles and writing, Phyllis Lassner questions prevailing approaches to the subject of women and war. As she shows women writers redefining traditional pieties of patriotism and duty and categories of hero and victim, prevailing political labels as conservative and liberal are also called into question. Drawing upon fiction, essays, and memoirs, Lassner explores the was writing of such well known figures as Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, and Stevie Smith in relation to equally powerful representations of was by Naomi Mitchison and Olivia Manning and by many rediscovered women writers, including Storm Jameson and Phyllis Bottome.