Marina Maxwell
  • Home
  • Blogs
  • About Me
  • My Books
  • Book Reviews

Reviews


NOTE!   As of May, 2025, I’m taking a sabbatical from writing reviews, apart from those for future editions of Historical Novels Review, the magazine of the Historical Novel Society, and occasional comments on Goodreads.
This is in order to concentrate on my own new writing project in a different genre.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
​
I read and review both historical fiction and non-fiction, but also enjoy biographies, crime and some contemporary fiction.
​ 

Please note that unless stated that I have received these books directly from the publisher or author in exchange for an honest review, I either purchase my own copies or source them from my local library service. 

​Links to Amazon, Booktopia or Dymocks in Australia are only for the reader's reference.

My reviews for Historical Novels Review can be found online here
​

Maiden Voyages

12/11/2023

0 Comments

 
Picture

This book tells the stories of women who sailed in ocean liners in the days before the cheap and easy availability of air travel. It focusses primarily on the “Atlantic Run” between Europe and North America during the first half of the 20th Century. 

It includes many female celebrities who are still well-known today such as Wallis Simpson, Marlene Dietrich, Josephine Baker. Others may have faded from memory, like the author E.M. Delafield, Olympic swimmer Hilda Davies or society “fixer” Elsa Maxwell. 

Other women made their mark at sea in different ways. Violet Jessup was a stewardess who famously survived the sinkings of both Titanic and Britannic, but undeterred, kept working on liners for many years afterwards. There’s even an appearance by domestic servant, Mary Anne MacLeod, who left her Scottish island home and arrived in New York with just $50 to her name. She found herself a wealthy husband and one of her four children has the name of Donald J. Trump. 

The research is expansive and effusive (and at times awkwardly repetitive). We are given great swathes of information on the building and history of the ships and their owners, plus the politics, social and cultural mores of the era and what the characters got up to before and after their voyages. If you want to know about Lady Nancy Astor or Diana Cooper or Hedy Lemarr or any of the other famous first-class passengers, there is already a wealth of historical information to be found elsewhere, and all this just diverts focus and makes the narrative top-heavy.  

Also, there’s major emphasis on the Cunard and White Star Line ships, with brief coverage of French, German, Italian or American vessels, and virtually nothing on other companies who plied the same route, such as Canadian Pacific Steamships (on which members of my own family crossed the North Atlantic several times).

Thus, it is discovering the experiences of the working women on board these ships that is the best part of this book. In particular, the few extracts from the memoirs of the redoubtable Edith Sowerbutts. She brings to life what it was like to be a woman at sea, the conditions endured and how her career was always precarious and susceptible to changing fortunes and world events. According to the bibliography, Edith’s memoirs are held by the Imperial War Museum but remain unpublished. This is surprising, as she was a remarkable woman who, as an early “conductress”, looked after countless women and children emigrating from England and Europe to better lives elsewhere. She lived long enough (died 1992) to have witnessed the progression of women into prominent roles at sea and wrote:-

“
Nobody had visualised that female staff, other than the very necessary stewardesses, would ever be carried on ocean liners … We, of my generation, comprised the thin edge of the wedge. Women would eventually be signed on for seagoing positions once considered to be male preserves.” 
 
Three stars. 
​

 
amazon.com 

amazon.co.uk 

Booktopia 
 

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All

    Archives

    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015

    See
    Historical Novel Society
    ​
    for my reviews of historical fiction
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Blogs
  • About Me
  • My Books
  • Book Reviews