Mass-Observation

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Occupation William Empson
WE was an enthusiast for Basic English (a simplified form of the language which he favoured not only for exchanges among scientists and others from different language groups, but also as an introduction to the...
politics Kathleen Raine
KR 's second husband introduced her to Communism as well as to the sociological-literary phenomenon Mass-Observation . She was never wholeheartedly committed to these political views, and eventually rejected them.
Raine, Kathleen. Autobiographies. Skoob Books, 1991.
166-76
Residence Kathleen Raine
She and Madge lived until 1940 at Blackheath in a house which was also a base for volunteers with Mass-Observation (a project for recording the lives of ordinary people for sociological and historical study).
Pedersen, Susan. “Sam, Caroline, Janet, Stella, Len, Helen, and Bob”. London Review of Books, No. 18, pp. 19 -22.
Textual Production Naomi Mitchison
On the day Germany invaded Poland, NM began keeping a regular diary, as part of her work for the sociological study Mass-Observation .
Mitchison, Naomi. Among You Taking Notes . . . The Wartime Diary of Naomi Mitchison 1939-1945. Sheridan, DorothyEditor , Oxford University Press, 1986.
31
Sheridan, Dorothy, and Naomi Mitchison. “Introduction”. Among You Taking Notes . . . The Wartime Diary of Naomi Mitchison 1939-1945, Oxford University Press, 1986, pp. 15 -24.
15
Textual Production Naomi Mitchison
NM was enlisted by Tom Harrisson to keep a diary for Mass-Observation , a scheme for gathering information about the lives of the nation's people. By 1937 she was writing her diary, by request, one...
Textual Production Naomi Mitchison
The title quotation from Robert Burns describes the writer almost as a spy on society; it continues, And faith he'll prent it.
Mitchison, Naomi. Among You Taking Notes . . . The Wartime Diary of Naomi Mitchison 1939-1945. Sheridan, DorothyEditor , Oxford University Press, 1986.
5
NM kept writing through difficult home front conditions, mostly at Carradale House...

Timeline

July 1935
An educated, married woman with small children, living at Ballingate in Ireland, wrote to the magazine Nursery World about her loneliness and depression, seeking suggestions for some affordable occupation.
By May 1937
Mass-Observation , a social research organisation devoted to observing the habits, behaviour, and opinions of ordinary people, was launched: Surrealist in inspiration, it became documentary and socially inclusive in aim.
12 May 1937
The coronation of King George VI became the first outside broadcast by the BBC Television Service.
January 1939
The information-gathering project known as Mass-Observation published Britain by Mass-Observation, an examination of the views of ordinary people on the Munich crisis of the previous September. It sold 100,000 copies in ten days.
24 August 1939
The day after the German-Russian non-aggression pact was signed, the British government prepared for war with the Emergency Powers Act. The Act put the full authority of the law behind defence regulations issued by the...
11 February 1944
Mass-Observation published the results of a survey of 10,000 readers in a report for the National Book Council entitled Books and the Public.
24 October 1944
A railway clerk named Mrs W. recorded in her diary (now in the Mass-Observation archive): I cannot write what I feel about all this evil. My soul cries out in distress. I am a Jew...
1949
Mass-Observation undertook the first comprehensive study of British sexual behaviour.
1949
The research programme Mass-Observation published Meet Yourself at the Doctor's, a collection of comments on the fairly recently founded National Health Service .