Gilda O'Neill (1951–2010)
Autore di My East End: Memories of Life in Cockney London
Sull'Autore
Gilda O'Neill is a founder member of Material Girls, a network of women writers across the whole spectrum of the industry.
Serie
Opere di Gilda O'Neill
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Data di nascita
- 1951-05-25
- Data di morte
- 2010-09-24
- Sesso
- female
- Nazionalità
- UK
- Luogo di nascita
- London, England, UK
- Luogo di residenza
- London, England, UK
- Attività lavorative
- novelist
social historian
oral historian - Breve biografia
- Gilda Griffiths was raised in the East End of London, where her family experienced the terrors of the Blitz in World War II and the upheaval of the slum clearances after the war. After leaving school at 15, she took a variety of office and bar jobs. In 1971, she married John O'Neill, who became an actuary in the City, and had a son and a daughter. After her children were born, Gilda O'Neill went back to finish her education and began writing. Her first book was the oral history Pull No More Bines – Hop Picking: Memories of a Vanished Way of Life (1990), based in part on her childhood. Her first novel was The Cockney Girl (1992). Over 20 years, she published 15 more novels and five social histories. Her obituary in The Guardian said: "Underneath that cockney persona, she figured out how to use story-telling, lived experience and memory to draw political parallels. . . Like Studs Terkel, she used real experiences to show, as in A Night Out With the Girls (1993), how history is made in the asides on phone-in shows, through the snatched dialogues and shared raucous laughter. She cherished the vernacular, while painstakingly checking historical fact."
Utenti
Recensioni
Was the Victorian period really so good, was it so much better than the present day Britain. If you think so read about the East End of London in Victoria's day - the problems, the crime, the poverty.
I probably would have preferred that the information that was obtained from that era was actually incorporated into her text rather than as separate sections in the chapters.
But still an interesting read especially if you are interested in social history.
A NetGalley Book.
I probably would have preferred that the information that was obtained from that era was actually incorporated into her text rather than as separate sections in the chapters.
But still an interesting read especially if you are interested in social history.
A NetGalley Book.
1880s London, and the story of Ettie Wilkins from Whitechapel and how meeting Professor Jacob Protsky changing her life; and the much abused Celia Tressing, daughter of a doctor. In the time of Jack the Ripper, though this part of story came much later in the book.
Unfortunately I didn't really find the story or the characters that interesting or entertaining.
A NetGalley Book
Unfortunately I didn't really find the story or the characters that interesting or entertaining.
A NetGalley Book
My upbringing was London - South-East at first, and then West, and then work started in the City - to where my ancestors were from. not quite the East End of the book. However, the authos is only 5/6 years younger than me, so there are so many parts which are so familiar about my early life
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Statistiche
- Opere
- 24
- Utenti
- 397
- Popolarità
- #61,078
- Voto
- 3.6
- Recensioni
- 14
- ISBN
- 137
- Lingue
- 2
The real treat here is just the very evocative descriptions from actual people of how they lived - the games they played, the houses they lived in, the people they talked to, how they got by, what the war was like. You can't point to any one thing and say "this is special" but taken together it creates an amazing portrait of a world that's now mostly gone. If you're interested in that sort of history of average people - not in the class sense, but just how average people lived - then you'll definitely enjoy this.… (altro)