Sarah Grand was a feminist writer whose novels were highly popular in the 1890s. The 1893 edition of The Heavenly Twins (first published in a private edition the previous year) sold twenty thousand copies in England in its first week and was a best-seller in the United States. Grand was one of the New Woman writers, novelists of the 1890s whose heroines questioned, challenged, and often rejected the traditional roles handed them by society. The novel became their platform for protest and their agent for change. These novelists, who dealt with matters of sexuality with a new openness, were best known for their attacks on traditional marriage, which they believed institutionalized female oppression and validated the double standard of sexual morality. Their heroines demanded new freedoms, including the right to pursue an education or a sexual partner of their own choosing. Although Grand is credited with coining the term...