Kate Macdonald - The Conscientious Objectors Wife
Here you can read online Kate Macdonald - The Conscientious Objectors Wife full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2018, publisher: Kate Macdonald, genre: Home and family. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
- Book:The Conscientious Objectors Wife
- Author:
- Publisher:Kate Macdonald
- Genre:
- Year:2018
- Rating:3 / 5
- Favourites:Add to favourites
- Your mark:
The Conscientious Objectors Wife: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The Conscientious Objectors Wife" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
Frank and Lucy Sunderland, English pacifists and fervent supporters of Labour politics and the Garden City movement, were separated in 1916 when Frank was given his prison sentence for being a conscientious objector. They wrote to each other from November 1916 until April 1919, while Frank was incarcerated at Wandsworth and Bedford prisons. Lucy looked after their three children in Letchworth, and earned enough to keep the family afloat by keeping hens, collecting insurance premiums and taking in sewing.This unique collection of letters is important as a working-class record of wartime experience. These letters show how their shared ideology of a socialist pacifism upheld the couple in separation, planning for a better future in a more equal society for all. The letters give contemporary evidence of events on the Letchworth Home Front: spotting airships, food rationing, hearing the London air-raids, the arrival of Spanish flu in 1918, and the sufferings of the European civilian populations immediately after the war.For readers interested in the First World War, British politics, the Garden City movement, feminism and womens emancipation, adult and workers education, Quakerism and pacifism.
Kate Macdonald: author's other books
Who wrote The Conscientious Objectors Wife? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Kate Macdonald
Kate Macdonald
Sarah Shieff
Jacqueline L. Jackson
Frank Chouteau Brown
The Conscientious Objectors Wife — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Conscientious Objectors Wife" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
The Conscientious Objector's Wife
Also published by Handheld Press
HANDHELD CLASSICS
- What Might Have Been: The Story of a Social War by Ernest Bramah
- The Runagates Club by John Buchan
- Desire by Una L Silberrad
- Vocations by Gerald ODonovan
HANDHELD RESEARCH
- The Akeing Heart: Letters between Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland and Elizabeth Wade White by Peter Haring Judd
First published in the UK in 2018 by Handheld Press Ltd.
72 Warminster Road, Bath BA2 6RU
www.handheldpress.co.uk
Copyright of the Notes and Introduction Kate Macdonald
Copyright of the Letters The Descendants of Frank and Lucy Sunderland
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.
ISBN 978-1-999881-37-5
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Series design by Nadja Guggi and typeset in Open Sans.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International, Padstow.
Front cover: Chrissie, Dora, Morris and Lucy Sunderland, with Morris in the Motor, June 1917.
The Descendants of Frank and Lucy Sunderland
Contents
Acknowledgements
The editor is grateful to Elizabeth and Tom Heydeman, Julia Prescott, Robert Sunderland, and the other descendants of Frank and Lucy Sunderland, for their work in retyping their grandparents letters, for their assistance in identifying individuals and places, and for permission to publish the edited letters. She is also grateful for Rebecca Wynters useful suggestions, and Tanya Izzards list of corrections discovered while making the index.
List of Figures
Kate Macdonald is a literary historian, and has published widely on British publishing and print history of the First World War. After teaching English literature at Ghent University and at the University of Reading, she returned to her former career of publishing to establish Handheld Press. She researches the business relationships between twentieth-century authors and their publishers.
Introduction
BY KATE MACDONALD
Background
Traditional histories of the First World War tend to exclude women writers in favour of male-authored literature from the trenches, which helps to restrict public understanding of the war to the soldiers perspective. The literary historian Margaret Higonnet notes that An emphasis on the firing line, which distinguishes the masculine battlefront from the feminine home front, has diverted attention from the history of womens experience of war. This edited collection of First World War letters fits into this reframing of the literature of war, and will, I hope, encourage a more complete understanding of the effects of war on the family unit, and on the burdens shouldered by women left to bring up their families alone.
Frank and Lucy Sunderland were English pacifists and fervent believers in Labour politics and the Garden City movement. They had moved to Letchworth from London for their childrens health, and were enthusiastic supporters of this community, which was designed for social and environmental harmony. After Frank was imprisoned for his conscientious objection to military service, Lucy worked to support their family of three children by collecting insurance premiums and taking in sewing. The predominantly pacifist and Quaker community in Letchworth supported them during their ordeal, in contrast to the attitudes of their families in London, who viewed Franks stance as unpatriotic. Frank and Lucy wrote to each other as often as the law permitted, from his first arrest in November 1916 until his release in April 1919. Lucy's letters are rare surviving evidence of a working-class womans wartime experience in her own words.
As well as testifying to their love and loyalty to each other, the letters show how their shared beliefs upheld the couple through two and a half years of separation, thinking through how a better future for all in a more equal society could be achieved. The letters record their daily lives, the increasing hardships of war on the Home Front, how Lucy began to involve herself more in politics during the war, and contemporary events. Lucys nascent feminism was inspired by attending adult education classes and public talks by Sylvia Pankhurst and other feminist campaigners. She gained self-confidence by finding herself able to support her husband and family financially and emotionally, though the strains were hard. Her increasing involvement in civic and local organisation helped her cope with the stress of separation, and strengthened the networks that supported her during the frightening outbreak of scarlet fever in their family, and her mothers sudden death. Frank maintained his psychological equilibrium by enlarging his political and theological knowledge through extensive reading and cell discussions.
1. Dora and Chrissie Sunderland, March 1918.
2. Lucy and her son Morris Sunderland, March 1918
Frank was an example of the worthy conscientious objector (CO), an older man of tested principles who was respected by the authorities for his beliefs. The Military Service Act of 2 January 1916 came into force on 2 March, introducing conscription for unmarried men aged between 18 and 41 (there were some exemptions). A second Act in May 1916 extended conscription to all married men. A conscience clause was included in the original Act, after lobbying by the Quakers and the No Conscription Fellowship. The legal historian Lois Bibbings notes that:
those with a conscientious objection to military service could be granted various forms of exemption from conscription by (successfully) applying to a tribunal system [] The most limited form of exemption allowed for recognised objectors to be enlisted into the military but provided that they were only required to undertake non-combatant work in the Non-Combatant Corps (partial exemption) [] Alternative service exempted men from the military on the condition that they undertake or continue to be employed in work that was deemed to be acceptable and of national importance (conditional exemption).
Frank had left school at the minimum age but continued to read voraciously, educating himself in the classic fashion of an autodidact for the period. He and Lucy married in 1904. He served in the City of London Volunteers as a young man and was listed in the 1911 Census as an iron machinist for the Midland Railway. He later became a cabinet maker and, after the war, a picture framer and smallholder.
When war broke out in 1914, Frank had evolved his politics, and his stance on fighting as a means to end conflict, in line with his Christian faith. He had been a Presbyterian, but he asked for a Quaker chaplain on entering prison, and occasionally mentions preaching himself, an extension of the ad hoc lectures that he would deliver to his cell-mates.
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
Similar books «The Conscientious Objectors Wife»
Look at similar books to The Conscientious Objectors Wife. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Sarah Shieff
Jacqueline L. Jackson
Frank Chouteau Brown
Reviews about «The Conscientious Objectors Wife»
Discussion, reviews of the book The Conscientious Objectors Wife and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.