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

Description

'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.

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.