The Nightmare of History: The Fictions of Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence is an attempt to show the influence of the First World War on the literary and cultural attitudes of these two seminal, yet very different, writers. It demonstrates that Woolf and Lawrence shared many perspectives about the dislocations and horrors created by war, as well as potential, although probably unachievable, cultural resurrection.

Helen Wussow reveals that the authors' uses of language, their shaping of verbal forms applied simultaneously to issues of personal relationship and public or cultural history, show remarkable similarities. She argues that the works of these two authors are informed by the dynamics of conflict. Yet, at the same time, Wussow is always aware of significant differences between Lawrence's and Woolf's fictions.