Hidden Lives: A Family Memoir

by Margaret Forster (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1996

  $3.40

  Margaret Forster's grandmother died in 1936, taking many secrets to her grave. Where had she spent the first 23 years of her life? Who was the woman in black who paid her a mysterious visit shortly before her death? How had she borne living so close to an illegitimate daughter without acknowledging her? The search for answers took Margaret on a journey into her family's past, examining not only her grandmother's life, but also her mother's and her own. The result is both a moving, evocative memoir and a fascinating commentary on how women's lives have changed over the past century.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1995

  $3.25

  This memoir takes in three generations of Margaret Forster's family, beginning with her grandmother, who took to her grave the secrets of the first 23 years of her life. The stories surrounding the grandmother have attained the status of family myth, and in Hidden Lives , she looks at where the truth might lie. Was the mysterious woman who interrupted her wake really another daughter? How had this woman lived round the corner for so long without acknowledgement? The search for answers takes Margaret Forster on a journey into her family's past. She not only examines her grandmother's life, but also the lives of her mother Lilian, and of herself - three generations of women born and brought up in radically different circumstances. Margaret Ann was a domestic servant before she married a butcher and settled down to have a family. Their eldest daughter, Lily, was a bright child, able to go to the Higher Grade School and get a good job as a clerk, but when she married she was obliged to relinquish her career and settle for family life. When her daughter Margaret's time came, she was able to take advantage of the changing times, go to the High School, to Oxford University and to move away from her home town of Carlisle to establish her writing career and family in the south.

• New

  Paperback
  1996

  $16.04

  Margaret Forster's grandmother died in 1936, taking many secrets to her grave. Where had she spent the first 23 years of her life? Who was the woman in black who paid her a mysterious visit shortly before her death? How had she borne living so close to an illegitimate daughter without acknowledging her? The search for answers took Margaret on a journey into her family's past, examining not only her grandmother's life, but also her mother's and her own. The result is both a moving, evocative memoir and a fascinating commentary on how women's lives have changed over the past century.