How Two Million Women Survived Without Men after the First World War
Statistics predict 11 million singles in Britain by 2010. To the Bridget Jones generation it often seems as if available men are getting scarcer; but there is nothing new about young women who can’t find relationships.
Singled Out tells the story of a generation of women, brought up in the unquestioning belief that marriage was their birthright, who discovered after the 1914-18 war that there were, quite simply, not enough men to go round. In the 1920s they were known as the 'Surplus Women’.
This book is a rich, moving and ultimately affirmative account of the spinsters forgotten by history but remembered by many of us as our teachers and our maiden aunts. Grief and war forced these women to rebuild their lives, and to stop depending on men for their income, identity and happiness. Drawing on a wealth of sources including unpublished autobiographies, individual interviews, problem pages and lonely hearts columns, it explores their economic, emotional and sexual survival.
Singled Out vividly describes the deprivations: frustration, poverty, childlessness; but also demonstrates the rewards: profound friendships, professional fulfilment, independence. Reincarnated from her origins as the warped and unhinged old maid of Dickensian fiction, the single woman emerges from the 19th Century shadows and finds a new role teaching, nursing, campaigning, earning her own living, and in certain circles acquiring an enviable sexual glamour. From mill girl to model, secretary to scientist, poet to professor, here is a ‘magnificent regiment’ of unsung women who through courage, talent and energy made themselves indispensable and changed their century.
For many of the ‘Surplus Two Million’, being denied marriage was a liberation and a launching pad. If they had not refused to be marginalised, women might still lack the professional, political and social status that they have today. Instead, in the twenty-first century, women feel empowered by history to expect the equality, respect and rights accorded to them by law and justice. Through sheer force of numbers, they steered women’s concerns to the top of the agenda, and there they have remained.
Miriam Margolyes read Singled Out for five mornings as Radio 4’s Book of the Week in August 2007
- It was also the Daily Mail Book Club choice for June 2007.
- In November 2008 Singled Out was published by Turner Libros, Madrid, and in December 2008 it will be published by Oxford University Press USA.
- A Large Print edition is available from Windsor/Paragon.
- Also available as an Audio Book read by Maggie Mash (unabridged) from Clipper Audio
Reviews
“Remarkably perceptive and well-researched… Nicholson is the author of that brilliantly original study Among the Bohemians, and in Singled Out she has produced another extraordinarily interesting work, sensitive, intelligent and well-written”
“Pioneering, powerful, inspiring…”
“Virginia Nicholson’s method is sympathetic. She does not browbeat us with statistics and social trends, but instead tells us stories about individual lives… [she] has a light but knowing touch… A ground-breaking book, richly nuanced with titbits of information, insight and understanding”
“The charm of Singled Out lies not so much in its uplift as in its method and atmosphere… The period is beautifully caught… Inspiring, lovingly researched, well-written and humane. Virginia Nicholson has found one of those subjects which sits unregarded under our noses and has discovered in it a rich seam of personal and historical interest”
“It is high time to dig [this generation] up again, salute their memory and listen to their sad and uncomplaining voices unmuffled at last in Nicholson’s brave, humane and honest book.”
“Singled Out is a celebration of pluckiness, realism, intellectual independence and self-reliance. Nicholson has taken a feature of 20th Century British social life that is familiar to us – but here gives it the intelligent and humane examination it deserves.”
“Virginia Nicholson has found a wonderful subject. The virtue of her book is that she doesn’t attempt to generalize or theorise or preach, but allows the women to speak for themselves. Taking the life stories of a sample of women, she skillfully weaves them into her narrative, and the result is not an arid social history but a book packed with human interest, elegant, funny and a compelling read”
“Nicholson has done a sterling duty in revealing the degree of fortitude and even humour with which this ill-fated but gallant sisterhood conducted themselves. Theirs is a story of quiet bravery worthy of the men they lost in battle.”