Class of '37: ‘A wonderful rear-view glimpse of [a] vanishing world’ – Simon Garfield. Longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize

by Hester Barron, Claire Langhamer

It is 1937 in a northern mill-town and a class of twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls are writing about their lives, their world, and the things that matter to them. They tell of cobbled streets and crowded homes; the Coronation festivities and holidays to Blackpool; laughter and fun alongside poverty and hardship. They are destined for the cotton mill but they dream of being film stars. Class of '37 uses the writing of these young girls, as collected by the research organisation Mass Observation, to rediscover this lost world, transporting readers back in time to a smoky industrial town in an era before the introduction of a Welfare State, where once again the clouds of war were beginning to gather. Woven within this rich, authentic history are the twists and turns of the girls' lives from childhood to beyond, from their happiest times to the most heart-breaking of their sorrows. A compelling social history, this intimate reconstruction of working-class life in 1930s Britain is a haunting and emotional account of a bygone age.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

254 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 22, 2021

Reviews

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mass Observation started in 1937 when Bolton was chosen as a town to be observed in detail, and a team of Observers recorded the lives of the Boltonians, from their schooling to where they lived and worked, to what they did for leisure.

In this book, the authors looked at Mass Observation essays on various subjects written by seventeen 12 and 13 year old girls. In 1937 there were 120 cotton mills in Bolton employing over thirty thousand people, and many of the pupils interviewed would end up working there. There were also twenty two cinemas! As part of their research the authors also tracked down relatives - children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews - of the girls, and were able to build a picture of where life took them. This book is a fascinating insight into the lives of those girls and their families, and I really enjoyed it! 🙂

The mass observation project ran from 1937 to the mid-60s and was revived in simplified form in 1981 with the '12th May Diary Project' which asks participants to record everything they do on this day and upload it, anonymously, to an online archive. I first came across this in 2020 when I read an article online during the first Covid Lockdown and decided to record my own day. I am planning to do it every few years.

More info on what to do if you fancy joining me can be found here:

http://www.massobs.org.uk/write-for-u...

[Alexa · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up to four stars. The content that was there was wonderful, but there was a lot more conjecture/filler/tangential material beyond the basis of the Mass Observation essays than I was expecting. Absolutely still worth the read, though. It did provide a vivid picture of life in that time and place.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a fascinating book, reading the thoughts of 12 and 13-year-old girls in 1937.