Duncan Crow (1920–1981)

This isn't a bad book but it has major flaws. I picked this up thinking it'd cover every aspect of a woman's life in the Edwardian Era (the title is vague enough to allow for this interpretation) and it's such a narrow study that it left me really disappointed and hungry for more. Crow's topic is really A Few Select Aspects of a Rich English Woman's Life in Edwardian England. This isn't a book I would recommend as a starting point on the era or you'll soon be lost, its intent is more to draw a few portraits of carefully selected women who, according to Crow, embody different aspects of women's lives in England at the beginning of the 20th century. I took a few notes and it's not an uninteresting book by any means - if you're interested in the period, it's a really good read, it just fails to fill any particular gap as it's neither comprehensive nor earth-shattering. Sadly, another one of its flaws is the absence of any bibliography - I would have loved to dig deeper into some topics that are simply mentioned by Crow here but he never gives you the opportunity to do so. Besides, Crow fails to show how Edwardian women's lives differed from their Victorian ancestors and keeps referring to another work of his, The Victorian Woman, in almost every chapter. This is a mistake - if you choose to write a book on a topic, at least justify why it's different from what you've done before, don't keep referring to another work in a cheap attempt to have us buy one more book. I shall be reading a general overview of the period next, and then I'll try and find more books on Edwardian women specifically, though they seem quite scarce.… (meer)