Writing the War and After: Wicked Ladies and Wayward Women in the 1940s

Abstract

During the war, reading was an important form of escape from tension, fear and boredom. In 1944, a Mass Observation survey of 10,000 readers found that their strongest desire was for ‘relaxation’ and that most readers described their tastes as ‘escapist’ (McAleer, 1992, 94, 95). Readers frequently turned to historical fiction because it offered escape to another time. A 24-year-old woman war worker described her tastes as follows:

I like Daphne du Maurier’s books, especially Frenchman’s Creek and also Baroness Orczy’s. Books dealing with some costume period when smugglers had the rule of the seas. I like books to take me into another world far from the realities of this. (McAleer, 1992, 96)