Fenwomen

Mary Coe recalls summers spent gleaning in the fields, laudanum-soothed babies strapped to their mothers backs. Ann Sharman, married and pregnant at seventeen, imagines another life outside the village. Eighty-six-year-old Sybil Hayhoe looks back with pride at her years in service, while the village postwoman is sharply aware of her unequal wages. Girls aspire to be housewives, hairdressers or nurses - except Fiona, who dreams of training horses.

Told through the voices of ordinary women, Mary Chamberlains portrait of an isolated village in the Cambridgeshire Fens remains as vital and thought-provoking as on its groundbreaking publication in 1975. A feminist answer to Ronald Blythes Akenfield, it vividly captures the rhythms, hopes and tensions of womens lives in a working-class rural community, and offers a unique snapshot of an almost-vanished England.

Fenwomen is a fascinating insight into 20th-century rural lifeThe Times

A strong and moving bookSunday Times

[A] masterpieceReviews in History

A pioneering work of oral history History Today