Herstory

Professor finds cache of previously unpublished letters by author of Frankenstein, written between 1831 and 1849

...The letters date between 1831, nine years after the death of her poet husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and 1849, when Mary Shelley was already unwell with the brain tumour that would kill her two years later, and show a woman who was skilled in charming favours from friends, bursting with pride in and concern for her teenage son – and not unconcerned with frivolities. A last-minute ticket to the coronation of William IV in 1831 necessitated a 3am visit from her hairdresser; she attended the event sporting a plumed headdress ("The whole thing was wondrously splendid – Diamonds & cloth of gold grew common to the eye.")

The later letters, written in an increasingly scrawled hand, are short and distracted, full of apologies for her failing memory and powers. To a number of them is still attached a blob of scarlet wax stamped with the author's own seal – one that was not previously known, according to Crook.

this is an original antique lithograph from late 19th century it is a book plate printed in leipzig, germany in 1894 the print measures

The women born between 1905 and 1909 were the same young girls who grew up during the years of the women’s suffrage movement in the US. They would have seen the struggle, heard the talk, and knew they could have greater freedom of choice in living their lives. They too would see, if not quite be, part of the flapper movement. Activism and parenting being almost completely at odds with one another, some may have opted not to have children — and at this time, birth control, thanks to Margaret Sanger, was becoming a realistic option.

And, just as these young women were perhaps thinking of starting a family…

Along comes The Great Depression — the one of that started about 1929, not the one some say we are approaching now — and the birthrate fell about one-tenth globally from the rate during the “prosperous” 1920′s. In America, the birth rate dropped below the replacement level for the first time in history.

The Mass Observation project was a government led project that aimed to record everyday life in Britain using around 500 volunteer ‘observers’ who either kept diaries or replied to open-ended questionnaires. The project kicked off in August 1939 when Mass Observation invited members of the public to record and send them a day to day account of their lives in the form of a diary.