The great bulk of work on gender in fiction and literature has reflected feminist concerns and focused on women authors. This book attempts to extend the contemporary preoccupation with representations of gender into the terrain of masculinity and male writing. Drawing on work in both the social sciences and humanities, it explores the narrative representation of masculinity in selected twentieth-century fictions ranging from classic texts by Lawrence and Conrad to novels by John Fowles, Graham Swift, David Leavitt and others.

Ben Knights is Emeritus Professor of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Teesside, UK. Till 2011 he was Director of the UK national English Subject Centre (HEA). A graduate of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, his books include Writing Masculinities: Male Narratives in Twentieth-Century Fiction (Palgrave), From Reader to Reader: Theory, Text and Practice in the Study Group , The Listening Reader: Fiction and Poetry for Counsellors and Psychotherapists , and (as editor) Masculinities in Text and Teaching (Palgrave).