Book Review: Myself When Young (1938)

I'm not a paper fetishist. The smell of old books does nothing for me. But I'll admit to a slight sense of wonder when I held this 86-year old book in my hands.

What is feminism?

This is an out of print, and somewhat obscure, attempt to answer that question. Out of the shadow of the Great War and barely a decade after universal suffrage in the UK, one woman decided to catalogue the autobiographies of prominent women in society.

Margot Asquith, Countess of Oxford and Asquith, was the wife of former Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. She was a socialite and knew simply everyone worth knowing. She asked her many friends to write a short autobiography of their formative years. The results were… eclectic.

Of course, the writers were all white Christian women who had achieved significant notability. Among them are women still remembered today and others who have long faded into obscurity. They (mostly) had fascinating lives which led them to the pinnacle of society. It is only when you read their Wikipedia biographies that you discover which were to become Nazi collaborators and eugenicists.

The women come from a range of backgrounds - we hear about the abject poverty of some childhoods and the stultifying luxury of others. The slang is outdated, and the name-dropping will send you scurrying for a search engine. A large number of the women complain about modernity, and how modern feminism has lost its way. Such complaints, it seems, will never be extinguished.

Of particular interest are the autobiographies of Sylvia Pankhurst and Coco Chanel. Pankhurst's is long and fascinating - Chanel's is hilarious and heartfelt. I've previously written about Caroline Haslett and her impact on the electrification of the British home - here she is in her own words. Similarly, Amy Johnson writing a few years before her disappearance is equally entertaining.

Of course, there are a number of biographies which are entirely skippable. The Marchioness of Londonderry spends about a hundred pages boring on about fox hunting and little else!

Times change, and reading this will expose you to some racism - both casual and explicit - as well as very outdated ideas on feminity, fidelity, and family. Some of the authors clearly feel that women can do anything as well as a man - others seem to advocate for women playing to their traditional strengths. The political spectrum is fairly well represented - although some of the arguments are now somewhat esoteric. One thing is for sure, there has never been any great consensus on what feminism means.

One of the things I found most interesting is the constant refrain from these women that they would rather have been men. Here's a sample;

Is that the frustration of women born in an unjust society, or something deeper?

This is a truly marvellous book. Both in terms of the ladies it portrays, and the arguments it espouses. It is also illustrated with a photograph and autograph of all its subjects. Although the book still appears to be in copyright, I'll attempt to non-destructively scan what I can for inclusion on Wikipedia.

The full list of contributors are:

• The Countess of Oxford and Asquith
• Margaret Campbell (Marjorie Bowen)
• Gabrielle Chanel
• Elizabeth Sloan Chesser, MD
• Caroline Haslett, CBE
• Ethel Levey
• The Marchioness of Londonderry, DBE
• Mary, Countess of Minto, CI
• Sylvia Pankhurst
• Edith Picton-Turbervill OBE
• Irene Vanbrugh
• Ellen Wilkinson, MA, MP