Bessie Wallis (b. 1904) Class matters
“Class was dreadfully important then. It often puzzled me.” Bessie Wallis’s family was working class. She makes no effort to hide this …
Bessie Wallis (b. 1904) War and Memory
Bessie does not dedicate a lot of time in her memoir to the first World War, however what she does include is …
Bessie Wallis (b. 1904) Habits and Beliefs part 1
In this first part of ‘Habits and Beliefs’ I am going to center my discussion on the culture of children in Bessie’s …
Bessie Wallis (b. 1904): Home and Family
“The family had closed ranks. At last we were a tribe united against all else.” Bessie Wallis’s account of her younger years …
Bessie Wallis (B. 1904): An introduction
I will be researching and posting about the memoir of Bessie Wallis, one of the autobiographies in the Burnett Collection. To begin …
Bessie Wallis (b. 1904) Life and Labour part 1
“What do the working class want with education? They have only to work.” For many of those who lived in West Melton, …
Researching Writing Lives
In this blog post I will reflect on the process of writing blog posts on my author’s memoir and what I have …
Bessie Wallis (b. 1904): Education and Schooling
Bessie lived in an area that valued strength over intellect. You didn’t need to pass the curriculum to work in the mines, …
Bessie Wallis (b.1904) Biographical entry
2:794 WALLIS, Bessie, ‘Yesterday’, TS, pp.31 (c.12,000 words). Extract published in J. Burnett (ed.), Destiny Obscure: Autobiographies of childhood, education and family …
Bessie Wallis (b. 1904) Life and Labour part 2
“I didn’t mind going out to work. It was just that girls were so inferior to boys. They were the breadwinners and …