Researching Working-Class Women's Memoirs for @Writing__Lives www.writinglives.org Bethany Lacey, Billie-Gina Thomason & Helen Rogers Liverpool John Moores University Keynote: Women’s Lives & Women’s Writing Conference, Bath Spa University, 25 May 2015 Bethany Lacey, Billie-Gina Thomason and Helen Rogers Liverpool John Moores University
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Writing lives & researching working class women's lives 25 may 2015
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Researching Working-Class Women's Memoirs for @Writing__Lives www.writinglives.org
Bethany Lacey, Billie-Gina Thomason & Helen Rogers Liverpool John Moores University
Collaborative research & public engagement to create digital archive & community resource:
• digitized memoirs• searchable database • submission platform for new life writing• biographical entries for the database• transcribing memoirs• online resources for family and community history• links to community writing groups• open community blog• teaching and learning resources for schools and universities• life writing, oral history and skills-sharing workshops
Writing Lives Project: Digital Archive of Working-Class Autobiography
Create online archive with searchable database by extending and updating:
John Burnett, David Vincent and David Mayall (eds) The Autobiography of the Working Class: An Annotated, Critical Bibliography 1790-1945, 3 vols. (Brighton: Harvester, 1984, 1987, 1989)
Project TeamDavid Vincent (Open University)David Mayall (Sheffield Hallam University)Helen Rogers (Liverpool John Moores University)John Herson (Liverpool John Moores University)Claire Lynch (Brunel University)Brunel University Special Collections Library
Bibliography was a pioneering resource for scholarship on working-class autobiography
but most studies still focus on published memoirs
How will including unpublished memoirs re-shape our understanding of working-class life-writing?
‘Memoirists are not entirely representative of their class (whatever that class may be), if only because they were unusually articulate. Autobiographies were produced in every one of the several British working classes, ranging down to tramps and petty criminals, but a disproportionate number were written by skilled workers and especially the self-employed. Only one in ten nineteenth-century workers' memoirs were written by women, and the whole sample is skewed to the political left: the twentieth-century volume of the Burnett-Vincent-Mayall bibliography lists many more Communists than Conservatives.’Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2001), p. 51
.
Pilot Database (John Herson & Helen Rogers, LJMU)based on Burnett Archive of Working Class Autobiographies
• c. 221 autobiographies collected by John Burnett – some published, many in manuscript form (typed or handwritten)
• held at Brunel University
• Online searchable database using entries on 221 memoirs from Autobiography of the Working Class (Burnett, Vincent, Mayall)
Example of one of the shorter entriesAlice May Collis, b. 1894
3:0230 COLLIS, Alice M., ‘My First Strike. 1909’ and ‘From Paper Blankets to Central Heating’, TS, pp.6 (c.1,500 words). Brunel University Library. Brief fragments of an autobiography describing the author’s participation in her first strike in 1909 over wages, which took place shortly after she commenced work on envelope folding machines in a London printing firm and which acted as a spur to her becoming an active member of the National Federation of Women Workers. The poverty of her childhood years forms the theme of the second short piece. The author died in 1973 (aged 78) and attempts to locate the full work have proved unsuccessful.
Pilot database using entries for Brunel memoirsby John Herson & Helen Rogers
Sample search Female Domestic Servants in Brunel CollectionSurname Forenames Birthdate Birth county Title Ref
Westall Lilian 1893 London The good old days 1:0746
Passiful Annie Elizabeth 1895 Sussex 'Memories of Aunt Bess'
3:0132
Morris Bronwen 1896 Glamorgan Untitled 2:0541
Pidgeon Alice 1898 Lancs Looking over my shoulder to childhood days and after
2:0619
Lord Annie 1900 My Life 2:0486
Jones Mrs. N. 1900 Cheshire Untitled 2:0444
Phillips Irene 1901 Beds Untitled 2:0612
Bell Rosa 1902 Cumberland R.M. Remembers 2:0059
Martin Grace 1903 Berks From 1906 2:0515
Woolland Mrs. H 1907 Worcs Untitled 2:0853
Ould Louie Emmeline 1907 Cornwall Memories 2:0574
Henderson Katherine 1908 Kent Had I But Known 2:0384
Relph Winifred 1912 Kent Through Rough Ways
2:0657
Rise in women’s life writing?Birthdates/gender of Brunel Authors
Building readers & users: Summarising, contextualising, interpreting manuscripts Skargon, Charles V. From Boy to Man the Hard Way (c. 100,000 words) 2:712
Dale, Elisabeth Untitled (c. 18,000 words) 2:199
‘Storying’ ordinary writing& making accessible
Norah’s diaries. . . are ordinary diaries, private diaries, not written to be read, presented in a style which is disjointed and telegraphic. . . . [T]hey are written like Tweets. 1st September 1939. Hitler declared war on Poland. Had to dye curtains. Everyone got wind-up. Ma went to help evacuation kids in. Not many came. Balloon barrage over Derby. Went to Helen’s with Pop. Everyone must have dark curtains. Sunny, cold.. . .To draw on Jennifer Sinor’s wonderful book, The Extraordinary Work of Ordinary Writing, the diaries have needed storying.Alison Twells, ‘Storying Norah’s Diaries’, 6 June 2013http://norahsdiaries.wordpress.com/
Nora Isabel Adnams (B: 1901)MY MEMOIRS OF DR. BARNARDO’S HOME, BARKINGSIDE, ESSEX
1904 to June 1911
Researched by Bethany Laceyhttp://www.writinglives.org/category/noraisabeladnams
Frisby, Minnie. ‘Memories’, Burnett Archive of Working Class Autobiography, University of Brunel Library, Special Collection, 1:250
War and Memory
Politics Work Habits and Culture
Reading and Writing
Education Family Purpose
Introduction
I have been bedridden now nearly 5 years and although crippled with arthritis and limbs and arms practically useless, my mind is very active and by musing and living in the happy past, I am able to forget much of the very painful present.
Bromsgrove
Dressmaker
Sunday School Teacher
Christianity
Music Country living
Educated
Married
Self-employed family
Circus
Fashionable
Death
Minnie’s Will
Reaching out on Social Media
Evaluation
For collaborative student research & social media seewww.bloggingbeyondtheclassroom.org