'This book represents a unique collaboration between a historian and four ordinary women who were extraordinary letters-writers, family photographers and memoirists. As British migrants to Australia these women recorded in intimate detail aspects of everyday life and women's experience that are often lost to history: childcare and housework, housing and domestic appliances, friendship, family and married life. Taken together, their stories enrich and complicate our understanding of key themes in twentieth century women's history. More than that, this is an exploration of the creation and interpretation of the stories we make of our lives through letters, photographs, life writing and oral history. What shapes women's life stories? What do they reveal and conceal? What can we learn when these women look back over their lives and the dramatic transformations of self, family and society since the 1930s?' (Manchester University Press website)
