Told in the distinctive & memorable voices of working class women, Life as We Have Known It is a remarkable first-hand account of working lives at the turn of the last century. First published in association with the Women's Co-operative Guild in 1931, Life as We Have Known it is a unique evocation of a lost age, & a humbling testament to what Virginia Woolf called 'that inborn energy which no amount of childbirth & washing up can quench'. Here is domestic service; toiling in factories & in the fields, & of husbands
- often old & ill before their time, some drinkers or gamblers. Despite telling of the hardship of a poverty-stricken marriage, the horrors of childbirth & of lives spent in search of jobs, these are spirited & inspiring voices.