Life As We Have Known It: The Voices of Working-Class Women

by Margaret Llewelyn Davies, Virginia Woolf (Introduction)

Overview

'I was born in Bethnal Green . . . a tiny scrap of humanity. I was my mother's seventh, and seven more were born after me . . . When I was ten years old I began to earn my own living.'

Told in the distinctive and memorable voices of working class women, Life as We Have Known It is a remarkable first-hand account of working lives at the turn of the last century. First published in association with the Women's Co-operative Guild in 1931, Life as We Have Known it is a unique evocation of a lost age, and a humbling testament to what Virginia Woolf called 'that inborn energy which no amount of childbirth and washing up can quench'. Here is domestic service; toiling in factories and in the fields, and of husbands - often old and ill before their time, some drinkers or gamblers. Despite telling of the hardship of a poverty-stricken marriage, the horrors of childbirth and of lives spent in search of jobs, these are spirited and inspiring voices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781844088010
Publisher:	Little, Brown Book Group
Publication date:	09/25/2012
Series:	Virago Modern Classics
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Life As We Have Known It includes voices from many working class women. It was edited by Margaret Llewelyn Davies, General Secretary of the Women's Co-operative Guild from 1889-1921.