Cover; Half-title; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Introduction; CHAPTER 1 Virginia Woolf's hereditary taint; CHAPTER 2 Boers, whores, and Mongols in Mrs. Dalloway; CHAPTER 3 Body and biology in A Room of One's Own; CHAPTER 4 Eliot on biology and birthrates; CHAPTER 5 To breed or not to breed: the Eliots' question; CHAPTER 6 Fatal fertility in The Waste Land; CHAPTER 7 The late eugenics of W.B. Yeats; CHAPTER 8 Yeats and stirpiculture; CHAPTER 9 Yeats and The Sexual Question; Notes; INTRODUCTION; 1 VIRGINIA WOOLF'S HEREDITARY TAINT; 2 BOERS, WHORES, AND MONGOLS IN MRS. DALLOWAY.
Donald Childs shows how Woolf, Eliot, and Yeats believed in eugenics, the science of race improvement, and adapted this scientific discourse to the language of the modern imagination. He traces the impact of eugenics on such modernist works as Mrs Dalloway, The Waste Land, and Yeats's late poetry and plays