Fenwomen
Mary Chamberlain, Mary Chamberlain, Alexandra Harris, Mary Chamberlain
A Portrait of Women in an English Village (Virago Modern Classics)
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Release Date: 11/09/2025
A Portrait of Women in an English Village (Virago Modern Classics)
50th ANNIVERSARY EDITION - now a Virago Modern Classic with a new introduction by Alexandra Harris
A 50th anniversary edition of the first book ever published by Virago, and a feminist Akenfield by Ronald Blythe - a fascinating snapshot of a vanished England, told through the voices of the women in an isolated village in the Cambridgeshire Fens.
'Full of dignity, courage and humour, and as fresh and insightful as the day it was written, FENWOMEN is a vital portrait of rural women's lives - not only as they were lived in the 1970s in one Cambridgeshire village, but in the generations before it, all over the country, and reaching forward into today's world, too' MELISSA HARRISON
Mary Coe recalls summers spent gleaning in the fields, laudanum-soothed babies strapped to their mothers' backs. Ann Sharman, married and pregnant at seventeen, imagines another life outside the village. Eighty-six-year-old Sybil Hayhoe looks back with pride at her years in service, while the village postwoman is sharply aware of her unequal wages. Girls aspire to be housewives, hairdressers or nurses - except Fiona, who dreams of training horses.
Told through the voices of ordinary women, Mary Chamberlain's portrait of an isolated village in the Cambridgeshire Fens remains as vital and thought-provoking as on its groundbreaking publication in 1975. A feminist answer to Ronald Blythe's Akenfield, it vividly captures the rhythms, hopes and tensions of women's lives in a working-class rural community, and offers a unique snapshot of an almost-vanished England.
'Fenwomen is a fascinating insight into 20th-century rural life' The Times
'A strong and moving book' Sunday Times
'[A] masterpiece' Reviews in History
'A pioneering work of oral history' History Today