This book challenges the association of abortion with the radical and pregnancy with the conventional by exploring the reproductive politics of British literature and film from 1907 when abortion was first used as a critical plot point in literature to 1967 when abortion law was liberalized in England, Scotland, and Wales.

Fran Bigman is an independent academic who lives in New York City. She received her PhD and MPhil in English from the University of Cambridge and her BA in History from Brown University.

Introduction

Chapter 1. Pregnancy as Protest: Speculative Fiction by WWI and Interwar Women Writers Beyond Brave New World

Chapter 2. Blood and Pain and Ugliness: Abortion in the 1930s Writings of Naomi Mitchison

Chapter 3. The Shattered Mould: Rosamond Lehmann and Abortion in 1930s Rhetoric and Fiction

Chapter 4. A Bit of Himself: Male-Authored Abortion Narratives from Waste to Alfie

Chapter 5. Bubble Baths for Brenda: Pregnancy and Abortion in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and 'Angry Young Man' narratives in Mid-Century British Novels and Film

Chapter 6. Babies without Husbands: Unmarried Pregnancy in 1960s British Fiction

Conclusion

Works Cited

Index