[pmyteh]

I think the writer means literary in the narrower sense of 'literary fiction'. Christie was a genre writer; like F/SF etc. I understand that wasn't quite respectable in the upper echelons of the book world. Certainly the reviewers in places like the TLS would be primarily interested in literary fiction.

[tgv]

The article may seem to take that view, but dispels it at the same time: "a list of 100 or so English woman novelists of the 20th century, a list running from Margaret Atwood to Virginia Woolf." Then it comes up with other possible explanations, all speculative. There's no conclusion.

[OfSanguineFire]

Virgina Woolf wasn’t so highly regarded until mid century, well after her death. Before that, her reputation did not extend outside a circle of modernists. The Bloomsbury scene in general were countercultural even within the English literary-fiction world.