This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

With an introductory letter by Virginia Woolf, first-hand records of working class women's experiences in early 20th-century England, from jobs to families to political awakenings

""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, this collection is a remarkable firsthand account of working lives at the turn of the last century. First published in association with the Women's Co-operative Guild in 1931, 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.

A reprint of a groundbreaking, first-hand look at motherhood for working class women at the turn of the last century

""I was married at twenty and a mother of three by twenty-three . . . When I look back at the first three years of my marriage, I wonder how I lived through it.""

When it was published in 1915, this collection provoked a sensation--for the first time, working women were able to put across their view of maternity. These humbling autobiographical portraits are as valuable today as they were almost 100 years ago: in their own words these women tell of the horrors of bringing 10 children into the world in as many years, of not being able to afford a doctor or nurse, and of the physical and emotional strain of bringing up large families with very little help. These extraordinary and inspiring stories of poverty and hardship remind us of the astounding endurance of women, and the strength of a mother's love.

Life As We Have Known It is a unique view of lives Virginia Woolf described as 'still half hidden in profound obscurity.' the women write about growing up in poverty, going into domestic service, being a hat factory worker, or a miner's wife concerned about the colliery baths, and how they become politically active through the Women's Co-operative Guild movement.