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Book Review of Between Ourselves: Letters Between Mothers and Daughters 1750-1982

Between Ourselves: Letters Between Mothers and Daughters 1750-1982


I wrote this review for Amazon:

This book sparked my love of reading letters and diaries. It is a wonderful compilation of letters written between mothers and daughters that spans 232 years (no e-mails in this book). Letters range from everyday occurrences to issues that are relatively unique to that period (such as abortion). The relationships between these mothers and daughters (some well known, others unknown to anyone except the editor) ranges from friendships to antagonistic. It's hard to really describe this book because of the range of these letters. Many letters are anonymous, some do not come with responses, and some sections are devoted to one mother and daughter writing to each other back and forth. When the author of these letters is known, a brief biography is given to shed some light on who the woman was who wrote a letter. Except for some well known American women, most of the women compiled here are from England, some from elsewhere. This book mainly focuses on emotions and not events, but it's a fantastic glimpse into the lives of mothers and daughters spanning a couple of hundred years.