Reviews Stead's novels as inheritors of the tradition of Roman satire, arguing that Stead's satirical fiction presents a contemporary view of her own historical period from 1930 until the Cold War. Drawing on Stead's notes, diaries and manuscripts, Pender examines several of Stead's novels and her English short stories and puts forward an argument about the centrality of satire to Stead's discourse about culture and history. She also draws attention to the intellectual rigour and encyclopaedic breadth and vision evident in Stead's fiction and demonstrates Stead's significant contribution to the radical novel in the twentieth century.