Life as We Have Known It

A first-hand record of working class womens experiences in early twentieth-century England, <em>Life as We Have Known It</em> is a unique view of lives Virginia Woolf described as "still half hidden in profound obscurity." The women write about growing up in poverty, going into domestic service, being a hat factory worker, or a miners wife concerned about the colliery baths, and how they became politically active through the Womens Co-operative Guild movement. Virginia Woolfs essay contains her candid and searching reflections on the Guilds 1913 Congress, the women who spoke there, and the differences between their lives and hers.