This book draws on recent deconstructions around the idea of 'femininity' as a social, racial and class construct and explores the diversity of spaces that may be defined as educational that range from institutional contexts to family, to professional outlooks, to racial identity, to defining community and religious groupings. It explores how notions of femininity change across time and place, and within individual lives. Such changes take place at the interface of external forces and individual agency. The application of the notion of 'femininity' that assumes a consistent definition of the term is interrogated by the authors, leading to a discussion of the rich possibilities for new directions in research into women's lives across time, place, and individual life histories.

Contented housewives, glamorous women, jive-mad teenagers - all are common figures in popular perceptions of 1950s Britain. But what more did it mean to be a girl or woman in the fifties? And what are the implications of this history for understanding post-war Britain? Women in Fifties Britain explores the lived experience of girls and women, and the way in which their story has been told. Crossing boundaries - disciplinary, conceptual and thematic - and drawing creatively on new and established sources, it extends and enriches the terrain of women's history. Diverse groups of women come into view, including farmer's wives, university-educated women, activist housewives, working mothers, Jewish refugees, girls 'at risk' and private secretaries. Revealing that their private, public and professional lives were central to reshaping society, the collection engages with the legacy of World War II, and with questions about the distinctiveness of the 1950s. Embracing emotion, labour, gender, class, race, sociability, sexuality and much more, the authors offer penetrating exploration of established and new categories of historical analysis. Placing the politics of gender at the heart of Britain's reconstruction, this engaging and important collection re-visions 1950s Britain and the women that made it. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women's History Review.

Contented housewives, glamorous women, jive-mad teenagers - all are common figures in popular perceptions of 1950s Britain. But what more did it mean to be a girl or woman in the fifties? And what are the implications of this history for understanding post-war Britain? Women in Fifties Britain explores the lived experience of girls and women, and the way in which their story has been told. Crossing boundaries - disciplinary, conceptual and thematic - and drawing creatively on new and established sources, it extends and enriches the terrain of women's history. Diverse groups of women come into view, including farmer's wives, university-educated women, activist housewives, working mothers, Jewish refugees, girls 'at risk' and private secretaries. Revealing that their private, public and professional lives were central to reshaping society, the collection engages with the legacy of World War II, and with questions about the distinctiveness of the 1950s. Embracing emotion, labour, gender, class, race, sociability, sexuality and much more, the authors offer penetrating exploration of established and new categories of historical analysis. Placing the politics of gender at the heart of Britain's reconstruction, this engaging and important collection re-visions 1950s Britain and the women that made it. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women's History Review.

This book examines school and college fiction for girls in Britain and the United States, written in the first half of the twentieth century, to explore the formation and ideologies of feminine identity. Nancy G. Rosoff and Stephanie Spencer develop a transnational framework that recognises how both constructed and essential femininities transcend national boundaries. The book discusses the significance and performance of female friendship across time and place, which is central to the development of the genre, and how it functioned as an important means of informal education. Stories by Jessie Graham Flower, Pauline Lester, Alice Ross Colver, Elinor Brent-Dyer, and Dorita Fairlie Bruce are set within their historical context and then used to explore aspects of sociability, authority, responsibility, domesticity, and possibility. The distinctiveness of this book stems from the historical analysis of these sources, which have so far primarily been treated by literary scholars within their national context. Winner of the History of Education Society Anne Bloomfield Prize for the best book on history of education published in English 2017-19

Focusing on one broadly representative figure, Francis Bedford, this study emphasizes how photographs operated to form and transmit cultural ideas and values. The first writing on Bedford since the 1970s, the book examines the work of a man who was one of Victorian England's premier landscape photographers, and also a successful photographic entrepreneur. His fusion of art and commerce illuminates classifications of each field, exemplifies the tensions between them, and demonstrates a reconciliation of two often conflicting sets of issues. This study fills an informational gap, and analyzes the definitions, expectations, and positioning of photography in its seminal decades. The multiple interpretative possibilities arising from Bedford's photographs in particular elucidate the range of discussions and complexity of ideas about culture and nature, the individual and the nation, home and abroad, and the past and the present engaging the mid-Victorian public. Major themes of the book include the intersection of nature and culture, the related practice of nineteenth-century tourism, attitudes toward historical identity, and the formation of a national identity in England and Wales, c. 1856-94.

Focusing on one broadly representative figure, Francis Bedford, this study emphasizes how photographs operated to form and transmit cultural ideas and values. The first writing on Bedford since the 1970s, the book examines the work of a man who was one of Victorian England's premier landscape photographers, and also a successful photographic entrepreneur. His fusion of art and commerce illuminates classifications of each field, exemplifies the tensions between them, and demonstrates a reconciliation of two often conflicting sets of issues. This study fills an informational gap, and analyzes the definitions, expectations, and positioning of photography in its seminal decades. The multiple interpretative possibilities arising from Bedford's photographs in particular elucidate the range of discussions and complexity of ideas about culture and nature, the individual and the nation, home and abroad, and the past and the present engaging the mid-Victorian public. Major themes of the book include the intersection of nature and culture, the related practice of nineteenth-century tourism, attitudes toward historical identity, and the formation of a national identity in England and Wales, c. 1856-94.

This book draws on recent deconstructions around the idea of 'femininity' as a social, racial and class construct and explores the diversity of spaces that may be defined as educational that range from institutional contexts to family, to professional outlooks, to racial identity, to defining community and religious groupings. It explores how notions of femininity change across time and place, and within individual lives. Such changes take place at the interface of external forces and individual agency. The application of the notion of 'femininity' that assumes a consistent definition of the term is interrogated by the authors, leading to a discussion of the rich possibilities for new directions in research into women's lives across time, place, and individual life histories.