Novelists Against Social Change studies the writing of John Buchan, Dornford Yates and Angela Thirkell to show how these conservative authors put their fears and anxieties into their best-selling fiction. Resisting the threats of change in social class, politics, the freedom of women, and professionalization produced their strongest works.

Kate Macdonald teaches British literature and publishing history in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading, UK. She researches twentieth-century British book culture, publishing history and popular reading, on which she has published widely.

1. Introduction: Politics and Pleasure in Language
2. From Communism to the Wall Street Crash: Buchan in the 1920s
3. Ex-officers and Gentlemen: Yates in the 1920s
4. Political Uncertainty: Buchan in the 1930s
5. Novels of Instruction: Thirkell in the 1930s
6. Aggressive Reactions: Yates in the 1930s and 1940s
7. Thirkell in Wartime, 1940-45
8. Rewriting History: Yates and Thirkell, 1945-1960
9. Conclusion
Endnotes
Appendix 1: List of works by John Buchan, Dornford Yates and Angela Thirkell
Works cited
Index