Bruce Clarke's study of Dora Marsden, who from 1911 to 1919 was founder and editor of influential periodicals the Freewoman, the New Freewoman, and the Egoist provides a fresh perspective on early modernism and its relationship to the cultural radicalism of the period.

Arguing that Marsden's contributions have been neglected and misunderstood, Dora Marsden and Early Modernism seeks to restore Marsden to her proper status as one of the major influences on modern British and American literature, as well as the early literary sensibilities of D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams.

1. Marsden's impressive network of literary relationships also included the likes of Richard Aldington, Edward Carpenter, H. D., T. S. Eliot, Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Amy Lowell, Marianne Moore, Dorothy Richardson, May Sinclair, H. G. Wells, and Rebecca West. The outspoken Marsden's periodicals were engaged with literature, politics, art, philosophy, science, and other central concerns of the Modernist period.

The Freewoman focused on feminist issues and provided a frank public exchange between women and men; the New Freewoman and the Egoist blended literary experimentalism with individualism and anarchism; all three journals reflected the gender roles, aesthetic movements, political identities, and scientific theories that informed the most radical conceptions of art and society in the first two decades of this century.