Modernism is the term used to describe a break with the traditions of art and literature that began at the turn of the 20th century and intensified after World War I. Woolf, along with James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein, was one of the pioneers of Modernist writing.

Modernism is characterized by experimentation, an irreverent attitude to tradition, authority, and the canon, and disillusionment with institutions and society itself. Modernist writing and art often contain fragmentary and denaturalized images or language. In particular, literature began to experiment with new techniques such as stream of consciousness, which rejected conventional narrative and even sentence structure and instead attempted to accurately convey the thoughts of a character as they passed through their mind. It is this new style that Woolf is attempting to both explain and justify in “Modern Fiction.”

As World War I progressed, one of the most important elements to influence Modernism was the sense of the speed and dynamism of this new age, in which technology was advancing at an unprecedented rate. Modernist artists and writers sought to find a way to get to grips with this new, ephemeral world; new narrative styles, poetic forms, and publication techniques were developed in the attempt.