Introduction: Time and Tide – Origins, Founders and Goals
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2021
Summary
‘PERHAPS some day a future historian will unearth the legend that Saint Bernard came to bless the offices of a paper, which was in its day not without importance, on All Saints Day, 1929.’ Thus spoke Lady Margaret Rhondda, founder and editor of the influential weekly review Time and Tide (1920–79), at a house-warming luncheon held on 1 November 1929 in the paper's new offices at 32, Bloomsbury Street, London, and presided over by the literary giant George Bernard Shaw. If I may identify myself as that ‘future historian’, the aim of this book is precisely to unearth the material history of this modern feminist magazine and to establish its ‘importance’ not only for its contribution to the political and cultural landscape of its day, but also for re-thinking our current critical narratives about both literature and feminism in Britain during the interwar period. The ‘ceremony’ at which Shaw officiated, as one of Time and Tide's star contributors, marked a ‘new chapter’ in the history of the periodical following its move from Fleet Street to Bloomsbury in May that year (8 Nov 1929: 1332). From its unapologetic feminism of the early 1920s Time and Tide had begun to rebrand itself as a less woman-focused, general-audience review, and by the end of its second decade there was very little, on the surface, to distinguish it from such male-edited rivals as the New Statesman and Nation. Concluding its house-warming feature Time and Tide asks: ‘And will it matter so much, in a hundred years’ time, whether the review was founded by men or women?’ (1334). The question speaks to the public attention Time and Tide attracted as a paper known to be directed and staffed by women, and is characteristic of the periodical's tendency to downplay sexual difference. As we shall see, an equalitarian feminist emphasis on women's common humanity with men (which tended to submerge the category of ‘women’) informed a great many of Time and Tide's strategies and manoeuvres as it worked to secure its position among the leading weekly reviews. But for historians today (nearly one hundred years on as I write) it does matter immensely that Time and Tide was founded by women.
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- Information
- Time and TideThe Feminist and Cultural Politics of a Modern Magazine, pp. 1 - 12Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2018