Dame Barbara Hamilton Cartland by Lafayette. (Lafayette Ltd)

A new photographic exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery is exploring women writers in the decades after World War One.

Women Writers runs until June 17 2006 and presents 24 photos taken between 1919 and 1960, examining the writers’ personalities, their subjects and the social changes which helped promote the growth in women’s fiction.

“These portraits illustrate a fascinating period when the field of fiction writing was dominated by women,” said exhibition curator Rosie Bradley. “In a display that includes some rarely seen portraits, unfamiliar faces are connected with many well-loved books.”

Pamela Frankau by Elliott & Fry. © NPG

During the period 1920 to 1960 the majority of British fiction was written by women, a fact partly explained by the social effects of the First World War. The ‘lost generation’ of young men killed in the war meant that more women were single and the conflict itself had shown women’s economic value to society - post-war women had more time and money to be able to write.

Other factors helped to fuel the boom in female fiction, such as the increased access for women to formal education. The result was a remarkable diversity of women writers, many of whom were hugely prolific.

Pamela Franklin had published 20 books by the time she was 32 and Enid Blyton could produce a children’s book in only five days. Female readers were hungry for new novels and could pick up the latest stories at lending libraries set up in chain shops like WH Smith and Boots.

Doris May Lessing by Mark Gerson. © Mark Gerson/NPG

Many of the portraits in the exhibition were taken by well-known photographers like Paul Tanqueray, Cecil Beaton, Man Ray and Bill Brandt, and feature both staged studio portraits and images of the writers at work.

Their subjects range from crime and romance writers such as Dorothy L Sayers and Dame Barbara Cartland, novelists once regarded as ‘middle-brow’ like Rosamund Lehmann and Elizabeth Bowen, and writers like Radclyffe Hall who faced scandal by tackling issues of female sexuality.