In Her Own Words: Stories From a Century of British Women’s Everyday Lives – From the Mass Observation Archive, by Hester Barron and Fiona Courage, with a foreword by Kate Mosse is set to be published in April 2027, ahead of MO’s 90th birthday.
In Her Own Words “will uncover and explore the daily reality of British women’s lives over the course of the last century.
Women have always been central to this remarkable archive of first-hand testimony. But no book has looked at their range of contribution in its own right, and across these decades. For many women contributors, MO offered a unique outlet for their intimate thoughts, feelings, and opinions, at a time when only a minority of women had a public voice – and then generally only in a circumscribed way – or one put on the record.”
Barron and Courage have said: “We have both worked extensively with Mass Observation throughout our careers, but working on this book has been an absolute highlight. We wanted to share the wisdom, humour and friendship of the women who have written for Mass Observation over the last 90 years, and hope that their voices will resonate with the book’s readers as much as they have with us.”
Both Fiona and Hester have worked extensively with Mass Observaiton over decades. Fiona has worked Mass Observation since 2000 alongside the other archival collections at the University of Sussex, and as the Archive’s curator was responsible for its care and accessibility. Hester is a trustee of the archive and a professor of modern history. In 2021 she published Class of ’37: Voices from working-class girlhood, co-authored with Claire Langhamer, which drew upon essays written by schoolchildren for the research organisation Mass-Observation in 1937.
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