Thursday, March 5, 2015

Ten top books about women in the 1950s

Virginia Nicholson is the author of Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes: The Story of Women in the 1950s.

At the Guardian, she tagged her ten top books about women in the 1950s, including:
A Fine Day for a Hanging by Carol Ann Lee

The story of women in the 1950s would not be complete without telling the bitter tale of the nightclub hostess Ruth Ellis, who in 1955 became the last woman to be hanged in Britain. Carol Ann Lee’s sympathetic disentangling of the evidence produces much new material and gives an account of Ellis that today would have spared her the noose. Probably abused as a child, she was certainly on the receiving end of snobbery, bullying, violence. Lee also points out that she was discriminated against for being a woman who not only needed but wanted to pursue ambitions outside the home.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue