Between Ourselves: Letters Between Mothers and Daughters 1750-1982

Between Ourselves: Letters Between Mothers and Daughters is a milestone in women's studies and a moving documentary tribute to the intellectual and emotional resources of women around the world as dramatized in over two hundred years of letter writing. In this remarkable anthology, Karen Payne has brought together private letters on a wide range of controversial subjects from over a hundred pairs of mothers and daughters, around the world and across two centuries. Some of these women are known from the history books but, in this unusual selection, such famous women as Florence Nightingale, Queen Victoria, George Sand and Vera Brittain rub shoulders with a dramatic cross-section of unknown women whose wit and courage are equally inspiring. From the nineteenth-century French provinces to modern Cuba and Iran, from Africa to Australia to Manhattan, these women explore the contradictions of their lives with humour and passion. Love, childcare, domesticity, work, sexual and racial identity, war, political beliefs, art, ambition, independence, bereavement — across all boundaries, these are the recurring themes.