8.4 /10 1 Votes
Language English Media type Print ISBN 0-7538-2383-7 Genre Memoir Followed by Shadows of the Workhouse | 4.2/5 Goodreads Publication date 2002 / 2007 Pages 368 Originally published 2002 Page count 368 Country United Kingdom | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Publisher Merton Books (2002)
Orion (UK, 2007) Similar Jennifer Worth books, Memoirs, Childbirth books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The actual setting wasn't in Whitechapel - it was in POPLAR, LONDON, E14. This area is served by 2 DLR stations, and bus route 115. It is about 2-3 miles east of Whitechapel.
Contents
Background
Worth wrote the book in response to an article by Terri Coates in the Royal College of Midwives Journal, which argued that midwives had been under-represented in literature and called on "a midwife somewhere to do for midwifery what James Herriot did for vets". Worth wrote the first volume of her memoirs by hand and sent them to Coates to read, and Coates later served as advisor on the books and the TV adaptation.
Setting
The book is set in Poplar, in the East End of London, where "Jenny Lee" (Worth’s maiden name) works as a midwife and district nurse, attached to a convent, Nonnatus House (a pseudonym for the Community of St. John the Divine in Whitechapel, where Worth actually worked). The story is split between chapters describing individual mothers and their often-traumatic deliveries, and more light-hearted incidents back at the convent. As well as the name of the convent, names of the characters are generally pseudonymous, with the exception of Cynthia, who remained a close friend of Jennifer Worth's in later life.
Characters
Influence
The success of Call the Midwife led publishers to release many similar real-life stories about nurses, midwives, and life in the East End of London in the 1950s, most notably Edith Cotterill’s Nurse on Call (Ebury, 2010), and Dot May Dunn’s midwife memoir Twelve Babies on a Bike (Orion, 2010). They both went into the Sunday Times bestseller lists. Some writers acknowledged the inspiration they took from Worth’s writing – Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi, authors of The Sugar Girls, wrote that their "aim was to capture a lost way of life, just as Jennifer Worth had done", describing the midwife books as their "touchstone".