The Surplus Women: How 1.7 Million "Unmarriageable" Women Built Modern Britain.

Описание: After World War One, Britain's 1921 census recorded something devastating: 1.7 million more women than men in the population.

The young men were gone. An entire generation had been killed in the trenches.

These women — many of whom had waited for fiancés who never came home — were labeled in the press as "the Surplus Women."

The name was cruel. What they did was extraordinary.

Unable to marry, many instead built careers, pursued education, and entered public life in numbers that had never been seen before.

Women like Vera Brittain wrote the defining literature of WWI. Women like Winifred Holtby became novelists and social reformers.

The generation of women who were told they were "surplus" went on to reshape British society, law, and culture.

They were not surplus. They were the generation that had no choice but to become remarkable.