Research Catalog

Title

Good-bye, Piccadilly : British war brides in America / Jenel Virden.

Author

Virden, Jenel.

Publication

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [1996], ©1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xii, 177 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.

Summary

• As much of the world tried to return to normal living and working patterns after World War II, some 70,000 British women chose to be uprooted from the homeland they knew and loved. These were British war brides, a uniformly young group who by marrying American servicemen became part of the largest single group of female immigrants to the United States.
• Though the women came to the U.S. from all parts of the British Isles, they were an unusually homogeneous group, averaging 23 years of age, from working- or lower-middle-class families and having completed mandatory schooling to the age of fourteen. For the most part they emigrated alone and didn't move into an existing immigrant population.
• Jenel Virden draws on records in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and the Public Record Office in London, as well as questionnaires and personal interviews, in relating the women's story. Virden finds that the marriages actually took place in spite of, rather than because of, the war.
• And, while the women benefited from special nonrestrictive immigration legislation - and found public welcomes and a good deal of favorable publicity when they arrived - they also had much in common with other immigrant groups, including a strong sense of ethnic identity.

Series Statement

Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Centennial series

Uniform Title

Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Centennial series.

Subjects

• War brides > Great Britain > History > 20th century
• World War, 1939-1945 > Women > Great Britain
• Women immigrants > United States > History > 20th century
• British Americans > Cultural assimilation

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [169]-172) and index.

Contents

1. Neglected Voices -- 2. The Second World War in Britain -- 3. Overseas Marriages -- 4. Gaining Entry to America -- 5. From the Old World to the New -- 6. Transatlantic Divorce, Paternity, and Incomplete Immigration -- 7. Transitions -- 8. Conceptual Assimilation.

ISBN

• 0252022254 (alk. paper)
• 025206528X (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

95004415

OCLC

ocm32666070

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries