The start of the twentieth century coincided with a series of social revolutions – some tangible and others less substantial. This chapter investigates three key areas which epitomised the revolutionary current of the time: sex, motorcars and money. As Samuel Hynes has noted, the tensions brought about by a new century marked by such decadent keynotes was almost inevitably one in which ‘old and new ideas dwelt uneasily together’ (Hynes 1968/1991: 5). As this chapter will demonstrate, Edwardian literary culture always attempted to do more than simply reflect the uneasy society from which it emerged. We can see this in the rise of the Edwardian sex novel, discussed in the first section, which in its various manifestations looked to break away from the perceived prudishness that had marked Victorian publishing. The Edwardian reading public clearly had an appetite to consider sexual relations more openly, and many writers and publishers, in apparent defiance of morality campaigners, attempted to satisfy these demands. While the motorcar (discussed in this chapter's second section) now appears an unlikely totem of controversy, literary discussions of the car in its earliest years were almost always contentious. The apparently equal measures of excitement and danger associated with this new form of transport ensured its symbolic association with a coming epoch which seemed marked by uncertainty. In the final section, money, the fundamental source of much Edwardian decadence, is discussed in relation to the new forms of drama that appeared during the era. While contemporary writing focused on sex and motorcars explored the putative cutting-edge of modernity in the new century, the primary issue of money allowed a more fundamental enquiry into the forces driving modern behaviour. Underpinning much of the material discussed in this chapter is the question that C. F. G. Masterman posed in the opening lines of his influential study The Condition of England (1909): ‘What will the future make of the present?’ (1).