Relationships between mothers and daughters are sometimes harmonious, often troubled, and always contradictory. Daughters want to break away, be independent, yet have the approval and advice of their mothers; their mothers, in turn, want to protect and defend their daughters, while willing them to stand on their own feet. This push-me-pull-you dynamic frequently remains unresolved.
Virginia Reynolds (nicknamed Boogie) was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1883, the daughter of former slave-holders and transplanted New Englanders (she was, proudly, a second cousin once-removed of Emily Dickinson). Her daughter, also Virginia (Ginnie), was born in 1908, and was given a cosmopolitan education that included a period in Biarritz and tuition in New York at the Neighborhood Playhouse, and from Martha Graham. On what was planned as a brief visit to England, she met and married a Guards officer, and settled down to a county existence among the gentry.
Three decades of letters between the two followed, and, edited by Ginnie’s daughter, they paint a picture of daily life in a very specific socio-economic group between the 1930s and the 1960s.
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