A Woman's Place, 1910-1975 (New ed of 1975 ed)

This is, perhaps, the most readable overview of twentieth century women's lives yet written, covering everything the reader might want to know about the suffragettes, early 'type-writers', contraception, work in wartime etc; and it complements Persephone's other books by exploring factually what they, indirectly, explore in fiction. "A Woman's Place 1910-75" was written twenty-five years ago by a novelist historian and is both human and humane, wise and cynical, polemical and witty.

It concludes, wearily: 'A woman born at the turn of the century could have lived through two periods when it was her moral duty to devote herself, obsessively, to her children; three when it was her duty to society to neglect them; two when it was right to be seductively "feminine"; and three when it was a pressing social obligation to be the reverse.'