Slashing university education: Women’s academic crime fiction in Thatcher’s Britain

Abstract

This essay analyzes Margaret Thatcher’s higher education policies and their impact on women, in particular, in order to examine the rise of British women’s academic crime fiction during and immediately following her tenure as Prime Minister. Looking closely at novels published between 1985 and 1999, the essay concludes that British women writers internalized the political conflicts and cutbacks initiated by the Thatcher government as the metaphorical ‘death’ of the British higher education system.