A fascinating insight into the lives of women throughout the twentieth century.
In 1935, a young woman calling herself Unique (Latin for 'everywhere') wrote a letter to the women's magazine 'Nursery World': 'Can any mother help me? I live a very lonely life. I get so down and depressed after the children are in bed. i know it is bad to brood. Can any reader suggest an occupation that will intrigue me and cost nothing!'
Women from all over the country wrote back expressing similar frustrations. These women were educated and ambitious but many of their careers had been cut short by marriage. They were full of ideas and opinions but had nowhere to express them. So they decided to start a private magazine. 'The Cooperative Correspondence Club' or CCC as it quickly became known -- was to be a bi-monthly publication made up of articles written by the members on subjects close to their heart -- the pain and elation of childbirth, difficulties during wartime, the struggles of daily life.
None of the women could have anticipated the way that the magazine would come to play such an important part in their lives, offering them both the chance to forget about being a mother and a wife and also giving them a place to express themselves through the best and worst of times. Deep friendships were formed and continued until age and ill-health brought the magazine to an end in 1990, fifty-five years after the first issue was put together.
Jenna Bailey, a young academic, came across the old magazines in an archive and immediately recognised their value, both as documents of women's lives in the twentieth century, but also as a set of brilliantly written personal stories. She set about tracking down the families of the CCC women and discovered that some of the magazine's founders were still alive. In 'Can Any Mother Help Me?', she has brought together this intimate and moving set of personal stories following an extraordinary group of women on their journey from being wives and mothers connected through a magazine to becoming inseparable friends, together through thick and thin.
