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Post by wickedkittiesmom on Jul 20, 2019 20:19:15 GMT
I just finished reading the The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Anne Barrows, a fictional account through a series of letters dealing with life in the Channel Island of Guernsey during the Nazi Occupation. It led me to find out about The Mass Observation Project started in 1937 in which housewives were encouraged to keep journals of everyday life in Britain before, during and after the war years. I have ordered one journal called Nella's Last War but am very interested in other journals that have been published and would appreciate any titles you can suggest. I have a great admiration for the British peoples' perseverance during WW2. Thanks in advance.
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Post by amyghost on Jul 21, 2019 15:07:42 GMT
I just finished reading the The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Anne Barrows, a fictional account through a series of letters dealing with life in the Channel Island of Guernsey during the Nazi Occupation. It led me to find out about The Mass Observation Project started in 1937 in which housewives were encouraged to keep journals of everyday life in Britain before, during and after the war years. I have ordered one journal called Nella's Last War but am very interested in other journals that have been published and would appreciate any titles you can suggest. I have a great admiration for the British peoples' perseverance during WW2. Thanks in advance. What a great subject to have taken an interest in. I found a link to what look to be some intriguing titles here: www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/mass-observation-diariesand I have a book packed away somewhere that dealt with the project in some depth. I'll see if I can retrieve the title of it for you. George Orwell did some writing about the project that's worth a read, and this book: George Orwell and Mass-Observation: Mapping the Politics of Everyday Life in England 1936-1941, by Nick Hubble is a good place to start with his work on the topic. I've wondered if it would be possible to mount such a project today in the UK or the US, relating to some pressing topic. Probably not--likely MO needed the impetus of something as urgent and immediate as the war to give it momentum (also the fact of a sweeping event that affected the lives of nearly the entire population to a profound extent)--but as a sociological tool that yielded some highly interesting, and sometimes moving, insights into daily life under fairly extraordinary circumstances, I don't think there's ever been a body of documents to quite compare to the MO project.
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Post by wickedkittiesmom on Jul 21, 2019 17:43:19 GMT
Thanks so much amyghost, I'm going to read the reviews of these books and probably see if I can find them on online bookstores like ABE books. Unfortunately the local library, even the main library in Mobile, Al leave a lot to be desired, its one of the things I miss about living in the Chicago area or the Albuquerque area.
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