Non-Fiction books about women’s lives sort of like Call the Midwife but not that

[UrEatingHamPam]

Not sure that’s quite the right thread title but not sure how to describe it!

Can anyone recommend any books sort of like Lark Rise to Candleford or Call the Midwife, not necessarily memoirs but first hand accounts of women’s daily lives, at any point in history really?

I’ve read a few that I’ve seen recommended on Mumsnet on a few other threads and they always hit the spot! Recently these include…..
Life As We Have Known it by Margaret Llewelyn Davies
The Life of Martha Ballard - a midwife in the early 1800’s
The Diary of a Farmers Wife 1796-1797
Below Stairs by Margaret Powell

I work in a big old country house and really like listening to audiobooks about servants lives and imagining what would have been going on where I’m working in days gone by! But there’s quite a lot of these sorts of books around so if anyone can recommend any decent ones (whatever that means, it’s subjective isn’t it!) then I’m all ears!

currently reading The Midwife’s Tale by Nicky Leap which is essentially a collection of interviews from women remembering the handywomen who preceded professional midwife’s and I’m finding it so interesting I’d love more of the same!!!

can anyone help with this niche request or suggest anything else similarly interesting?

It's a mixture of men and women but Simon Garfield's books of the Mass Observation diaries are really good.
I think there's 3 books. "We Are At War" and "Our Hidden Lives" (I forget the title of the 3rd one).
They're really interesting.

Testament of Youth - Vera Britain

Lady in Waiting - by Lady Glenconner (lady in waiting to royals,) about her life, (good and bad, ), living a wealthy life etc - very interesting

These books jumped to my mind

Woman in the Photograph - fictional books that is centred around the main elements of (recent-ish , ie 20th century) feminism , Greenham common, etc - not so much about daily lives but you may like it.

The Radium Girls is excellent

Wild Swans three daughters of China was good.

Cider with Rosie

Hons And Rebels by Jessica Mitford

More on the fiction side, The Forsyte Saga.

A bit different from your examples but I enjoyed The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes by Kate Strasdin .

Twopence to cross the mersey, and the sequels, by Helen Forrester. Her life (slightly adapted) in the depression to the war, after her family moves to Liverpool when her parents go bankrupt. She is kept at home from age 12 or so to look after the other children, in serious poverty.

Can Any Mother Help Me? By Jenna Bailey

@UrEatingHamPam you might enjoy Few Eggs and No Oranges by Vere Hodgson, which is her diary of life in WW2. Similarly, another very enjoyable wartime diary, May Smith’s These Wonderful Rumours!
(And Private Battles is the third of the Simon Garfield Mass Observation books).

Lynn Knight's The Button Box is a lovely book about clothes and how (mainly) women sewed and wore them through history.

Monica Dickens's One Pair of Feet and One Pair of Hands are fiction but very thinly-disguised retellings of her own experiences as a nurse in wartime and as a private cook. They’re also very funny.
(Edited for typo!)

I can’t really recommend more than Helen Forrester, as PP has, but thank you for the thread - I think I’ll enjoy reading them all too!

Oh also A Woman Of No Importance by Sonia Purnell

A London Child of the 1870s by MV Hughes and the sequels.

Molly Weir's multiple autobiographies were some of my favourite books as a mid-teen - she was still quite a famous actor in the 80s though more so in the 40s and 50s. She grew up in Glasgow tenements and was a really charming writer.

Nella Last's Diaries- also from the Mass Observation project. There are 3 - Nella Last's War, Nella Last's Peace, and Nella Last in the 1950s. Absolutely fascinating!

'Nella Last's War' is a real-life diary from a British housewife during WW2. It's very insightful but she struggles with anxiety/depression (reasonably enough given the circumstances) so it's not really uplifting!

The Little Village School books maybe? Officially fiction but based on the writer's memoirs from her teaching career. I think set in the 50s?

I was coming here to suggest these!

If you listen on the audiobook of this I think it's a very disappointing listen as the chosen narrator has a broad Scouse accent which is totally at variance with one of the books central themes; Helen Forrester spent the first part of her life in middle class southern England and her accent made her stand out like a sore thumb in the poverty stricken depression era Liverpool she was moved to.

This is a great book and I've read it many times. I'd love it if it was available in audiobook form, especially if different narrators for the different women members.

Tea By The Nursery Fire – Noel Streatfeild

I recommend A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt. She was one of the Mass Observation writers featured in Simon Garfield books. He gave her the pseudonym Maggie Joy Blunt. The diaries go from 1925 until her death in 1986.

Secret Voices: A Year of Women’s Diaries edited by Sarah Gristwood might be your sort of thing? Got it from this article here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-is-the-dominant-emotion-in-400-years-of-womens-diaries-180983834/

Lady Tan's Circle of Women is a fascinating novel based loosely on a real female 15th century Chinese physician. Caution: includes description of the process/effects of foot binding.

Monica Dickens, 'One Pair of Hands' and 'One Pair of Feet'.
Rumer Godden's autobiography in 2 volumes, 'A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep', and 'House with Four Rooms'.

Judith Kerr's 'When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit' and the sequels.