Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and worldly realism

Who would have expected Jane Austen to be up-to-date on gun technology or Virginia Woolf to recognise the class politics of plumbing?

Austen and Woolf are materialists, this work argues. 'Things' in their novels give us entry into some of the most contentious issues of the day.

This wholly materialist understanding produces worldly realism, an experimental writing practice which asserts egalitarian continuity between people, things and the physical world.

This radical redistribution of the importance of material objects and biological existence challenges the traditional idealist hierarchy of mind over matter that has justified gender, class and race subordination.