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Jennifer Worth (1935–2011)

Autor(a) de Call the Midwife

13+ Works 4,563 Membros 214 Críticas 1 Favorited

About the Author

Jennifer Worth was born Jennifer Lee in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex on September 25, 1935. She trained as a nurse at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, and then moved to London to train as a midwife. She later worked at the Royal London Hospital, the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in Euston, mostrar mais and the Marie Curie Hospital in Hampstead. She left nursing in 1973 to study music. She received the Licentiate of the London College of Music in 1974 and was awarded a Fellowship ten years later. She taught and performed solo and in choirs throughout the United Kingdom and Europe. When she felt her musical talents ebbing, she turned to writing. She wrote three books about her experience as a midwife: Call the Midwife, Shadows of the Workhouse, and Farewell to the East End. These books are the basis of the BBC television series Call the Midwife. Her other works include Food Allergy: The Hidden Cause? and In the Midst of Life. She died of cancer on May 31, 2011 at the age of 75. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos

Séries

Obras por Jennifer Worth

Call the Midwife (2002) 2,433 exemplares
Shadows of the Workhouse (2005) 932 exemplares
In the Midst of Life (2010) 196 exemplares
The Midwife Trilogy (2009) 131 exemplares
Letters to the Midwife (2014) 55 exemplares
Emergency Room (1980) 2 exemplares

Associated Works

Call the Midwife: Season 1 (2012) — Original book — 66 exemplares
Call the Midwife: Season 2 (2013) — Original book — 36 exemplares
Call the Midwife: Season 3 (2014) — Original book — 28 exemplares
Call the Midwife: Season 4 (DVD) (2015) — Original book — 17 exemplares
Call the Midwife: Season Six (2014) — Original book — 15 exemplares
Call the Midwife: Season Five (2014) — Original book — 14 exemplares

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Data de nascimento
1935-09-25
Data de falecimento
2011-05-31
Sexo
female
Nacionalidade
UK
Local de nascimento
Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, England, UK
Locais de residência
London, England, UK
Amersham, Buckinghamshire, England, UK
Educação
Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading, England
Ocupações
Midwife
nurse
memoirist
Organizações
London College of Music
Sisters of St. John the Divine
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital
Marie Curie Hospital

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Jennifer Worth, née Lee, was born in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, where her parents were on vacation, and grew up in Buckinghamshire. She left school at age 15 and learned shorthand and typing to become a secretary. She then decided to train as a nurse instead, and studied at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading, before moving to London to receive further training as a midwife. She was hired as a staff nurse at the London Hospital in the poverty-stricken East End. In the early 1950s, she worked with the Sisters of St. John the Divine, a community of Anglican nuns, helping poor women and their babies. She worked later at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in Bloomsbury, and at the Marie Curie Hospital in Hampstead. In 1963, she married Philip Worth, an artist, and had two daughters. Jennifer Worth retired from nursing in 1973 to pursue her musical interests. She taught piano and singing at the London College of Music, and performed as a soloist and with choirs throughout the UK and Europe. In 2002, she published the first volume of what would become a trilogy of her memoirs, entitled Call the Midwife -- it became a bestseller. Shadows of the Workhouse (2005) and Farewell to the East End (2009) also became bestsellers. A fourth book, In the Midst of Life, published in 2010, described her later experiences caring for the terminally ill.

Membros

Discussions

Críticas

Good, quick read. I've watched the series, so most of the stories were already familiar, just filled in with more detail. Pretty frank discussion of childbirth, etc. so heads up to anyone who is squeamish about ladyparts.
 
Assinalado
ledonnelly | 137 outras críticas | Mar 11, 2024 |
Jennifer Worth reflects back on her time, 50 years prior to writing, working as a nurse and midwife in the East End of London in the 1950s. In mostly episodic chapters (a few stories carry over a little longer), she describes the poverty and challenges but rich life to be found among the people she served.

Though the stories can be a bit uneven, Worth bring an immediacy to the time and place, particularly the docks in Poplar, where many families lived in condemned housing and the community was still deeply impacted by the second World War and the evil of the workhouses. It was, perhaps, a little unfair to the book that I'd watched the show based on it first and recently, because I couldn't help but compare and contrast in my head. Many of her stories stay the same or are only slightly more dramatized, though the order she writes them in is not followed, nor is it necessarily chronological in the book, either. Worth sometimes jumps around from one type of birth to another, and puts three times when a mother was concerned the baby might be Black when her husband was not in a row. And while Worth generally treats people with respect, attitude of the time about various ethnic backgrounds do come through in her writing. Some characters, such as Mary, Sister Evangelina, and Sister Monica Joan, get a lot of attention, while fellow midwife Trixie is barely mentioned and Cynthia only a little more so. Still, midwifery in general interests me, and Worth writes about the experience in loving and sometimes dramatic detail, as well as contrasting current and past practices in medicine, making for a fascinating memoir.… (mais)
 
Assinalado
bell7 | 137 outras críticas | Mar 6, 2024 |
This kind of feels like the behind-the-scenes for a film. And it's a lot better than the sequel. Although any book that's been adapted into something like a film or TV series probably feels like a behind-the-scenes because they tend to fill in gaps and make things in the shortened adaptation version make sense, this is especially true in the case of "Call the Midwife" and I think the book suffers a bit for it. In my opinion, unless you've watched the TV series beforehand, you're getting a lesser experience. I think the book has some great additions when it develops side-characters who don't even get named in the series get stories, and characters you know get more development. But the writing is a bit clunky, and some characters are completely absent but for a name drop or, at worst, in the case of Chummy, ridicule by the author. I get it, the author wasn't a saint. But it's still disappointing to see that she felt the need to include what is at best a number of insults in regard to Chummy. Chummy isn't perfect either, but really? Really? The other nurses, outside of some vocal quirks and lines of dialogue, are largely absent. Maybe the show isn't the most originally written thing in the world, but it at least fleshed out the world around the protagonist outside Sister Monica Joan. And I could do without the internalized sexism. For all that the author clearly has an interest in analyzing the world around her and how it connects, and a deep sympathy for the marginalized and vulnerable, a large number of whom are women, and given that she realizes that she has some growing up and learning to do over the course of this journey, she has some deep-seated internalized sexism she never seems to deal with. And it's annoying at best.

I'm also really curious where she got all of her information. Some of it she explains, but some seem to come out of nowhere. I'm assuming she took meticulous notes and spent days or more with some of these people.

Overall, it's a nice addition if you like the show, and far more enjoyable than the sequel.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
AnonR | 137 outras críticas | Aug 5, 2023 |
I liked this a little more than the previous books primarily because there are some great stories about Chummy in here.

I originally watched the TV series and read this afterward out of curiosity, and I feel very conflicted about the results. On the one hand, I enjoyed the episode where Sister Evangelina and Trixie board that ship and deliver the baby to the "ship's woman". It's funny and fun and I think it's one of Trixie's best episodes. I also think it has a better conclusion.

On the other hand, I feel robbed of an amazing Chummy episode. The story in the book is incredibly inspiring and just... well... it's great. I'm sad I never got to see that on-screen.

This book also contains the conclusions for the characters in the series, which was interesting and a bit depressing to read. Of course most (if not all) of the characters are dead; I understand how time works. On the hand, it was interesting to finally see where everyone ended up.

I still am not a big fan of these books. I think they provide an excellent look at the history of certain fields of medicine, various important things about different types of inequality, and the struggles of women for equal rights. I think they drag, are a bit dated, but are at least a nice companion to the TV series if you're a fan. Might find it hard to rewatch the show afterward, though, given all that was changed.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
AnonR | 30 outras críticas | Aug 5, 2023 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
13
Also by
6
Membros
4,563
Popularidade
#5,511
Avaliação
4.1
Críticas
214
ISBN
149
Línguas
11
Marcado como favorito
1

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