Can any mother help me? More like it...

[Summerhillsquare]

Just devoured this book. It's an account of an early correspondence club for women that ran for 50 odd years. The title is from a letter that started the club, from a lonely and frustrated woman in the 1930s. They wrote long letters and articles, and sent them on to the next member, who could add comments or questions - like a protoMumsnet!

It made me think how little I've read of women's experience outside of novels. I'd love recommendations of something similar.

Thanks for all the amazing suggestions. Especially the historical ones. The women in Any Mother remind me so much of my grandmother and great aunts, who lived with so many restrictions and expectations on them compared to my generation.

Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart.

In 1909 she was a young widow with a baby, she moves from Denver to Wyoming to become a homesteader, the book is a collection of letters she wrote to her former employer.

I've just finished Three Sisters by Philippa Gregory - historical fiction based on the life of Henry VIII's big sister Margaret Tudor (written in her voice) who had the most bonkers and dramatic life - obviously Gregory has had to imagine how she felt about everything which she did (given the lack of sources about her feelings) but it's a fascinating insight into what life might have been like in her position.

Just thought of something else if you're keen on historical - do you know about the Paston letters? Collection of letters between different members of the Paston family, including women, in Norfolk in the 15th century. Various collections of them but here's one focussing on the women:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Paston-Women-Selected-Letters-Medieval/dp/1843840243

thehistorypress.co.uk/publication-subject/women-in-history/

Take your pick!

A slightly left-field recommendation for you, @Summerhillsquare. I picked this up when reading Sarah Ogilvie’s fascinating book The Dictionary People, which is about some of the hundreds of contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Two women contributed; Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, an aunt and niece who were also lifelong partners. They wrote together under the pseudonym ‘Michael Field’ and kept copious diaries which have been digitised, and can be read at this site.

I remember there being a dramatisation of this on radio 4 years ago, just amazing how they survived.

"A woman in Berlin", anonimous account of the liberation of Berlin and the atrocities ordinary women suffered from the nazis first and then from the soviet soldiers.
Edited to add: not a fun read, of course... but it's told from the perspective of an ordinary anonimous woman, not a heroine or a famous persona... so it's raw.

Yes, and the same with Frauen, which was an oral history project by the author Alison Owings. In the 1980s she interviewed German women who’d lived through the war. Some were complicit with the Nazis; others were active resisters. It’s an incredible read but very tough going. She went back again and again to talk to some women in many extended interviews. The point when some of them let slip that they still mark Hitler's birthday, for example, is a real stomach-dropping moment.

I loved that book too - it was the precursor of MN. some great suggestions for reading too -- I've just ordered Frauen from the library. Studs Terkel did some amazing oral histories - not focused on women but still interesting.

This is one of my favourite books ever and I'm always recommending it. The thing that most sticks with me is the running theme of highly intelligent women being (mostly) forced into lives as housewives and mothers subservient to their husbands; there's no choice. And so their friendship is so important to them. I don't think many if us in 2024 have a clue.

As to similar books the closest I can think of is A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey
Pratt
by Jean Lucey Pratt. She was born in 1909 and died in 1986. (Simon Garfield gave her the pseudonym Maggie Joy Blunt in his mass observation books)

I loved that book. Though a different time the frustration was so relatable (read when my children were small).

After I read that I got into a series of books that illuminated women's experiences in different times and would recommend Bombsites and Lollipops and White Boots and Miniskirts both by Jacky Hyams and Aprons and Silver Spoons by Mollie Moran, the Call the Midwife series, plus the Midwife of Auschwitz and the sequels.

I loved this book! I think you might like The Girl on the Wall by Jean Baggott.

I live Can Any Mother Help Me - I've often recommended to people as "the early version of Mumsnet"!
I lent it to my mother (82) and she really didn't like it which I was surprised about.