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Women Screenwriters

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Abstract

Despite the fact that screenwriting in the United Kingdom has been a male-dominated profession there were numerous women scenario writers in early cinema and prominent female writers between the 1930s and the end of the 1950s. By the early 1960s television was replacing film as the mass popular medium and, as the demand for melodrama and female-centred stories in cinema was replaced by TV soaps, the number of women writing for film declined substantially. Several went on to work in television where there have been many high-quality series and films for TV written by women. Since 2010 the proportion of women film writers has reached its highest level for many years and the need to have a more even distribution of gender in all aspects of film production, but especially writers and directors, is hopefully being addressed.

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Authors
  1. Lavinia Brydon
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  2. Marcella Forster
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  3. Christine Gledhill
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  4. Stella Hockenhull
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  5. Susan Liddy
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  6. Nathalie Morris
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  7. Jill Nelmes
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  8. Jamie Sherry
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  9. Paul Wells
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of East London, UK

    Jill Nelmes

  2. California State University, Fullerton, USA

    Jule Selbo

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© 2015 Lavinia Brydon, Marcella Forster, Christine Gledhill, Stella Hockenhull, Susan Liddy, Nathalie Morris, Jill Nelmes, Jamie Sherry and Paul Wells

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Brydon, L. et al. (2015). United Kingdom. In: Nelmes, J., Selbo, J. (eds) Women Screenwriters. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137312372_43

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