The Labour of Loss: Mourning, Memory and Wartime Bereavement in Australia

by Joy Damousi

The Labour of Loss explores how mothers, fathers, widows, relatives and friends dealt with their experiences of grief and loss during and after the First and Second World Wars. Based on an examination of private loss through letters and diaries, this study makes a significant contribution to understanding how people came to terms with the deaths of friends and family. Unlike other studies in this area, The Labour of Loss considers how mourning affected men and women in different ways, and analyzes the gendered dimensions of grief.

Genres: History

222 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 1999

Reviews

[Janine · Rating 4 out of 5]

It really wouldn’t have surprised me if this book had been reissued in the last five years, but it wasn’t. It would have done very well in the deluge of books about WWI between 2014 and 2018, and dealing as it does with loss experienced during and resulting from World Wars, it fits very neatly into the ‘history of the emotions’ school of historical enquiry, which has high prominence at the moment. But it wasn’t reprinted, and so it remains a fore-runner to much work that has been completed in its wake.

For my complete review please visit:
https://residentjudge.com/2019/12/20/...