Publisher's Synopsis
æWomenÆs talkÆ has been a widely noticed feature of working-class life throughout history, but it has not been the subject of much serious study. Melanie TebbuttÆs thorough and wide-ranging examination of its history is long overdue. - - Gossip played a central role in the lives of working-class women, performing a variety of functions, particularly those associated with the sharing and support networks which underpinned life in poor districts. This sensitive and accessible examination of street conversations reveals the dynamics of womenÆs relationships with family and neighbours, and records the changes in the role and meaning of gossip over a span of nearly one hundred years. It challenges the presumed importance of male talk, drawing on a wide range of textual and oral sources to rescue gossip from its usual pejorative associations. - - Its appeal to students of womenÆs history is plain, but it will also interest and provoke social historians and social scientists by marshalling much evidence from contemporary sources to contradict some widely-held beliefs about community and other postwar myths.
