Joy and Josephine

Monica Dickens

oct 2011 · Bloomsbury Publishing

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It isn't easy being born during The Great War. A young mother, desperate and alone, leaves her newborn on a church doorstep, whilst another dies in childbirth surrounded by wealth and family. Both baby girls are brought to the children's home, one to be adopted, and one to be looked after until her rich grandparents are in a position to look after her. After a tragic mix-up at the home, all is cast into darkness and uncertainty.

Years later Jo – a young woman seeking answers – attempts to discover which identity is rightfully hers. Did a poor young girl abandon her in a churchyard, or is she in fact a long-lost member of the aristocracy? Is she Joy, or is she Josephine?

Originally published in 1948, witty, engaging, and heartfelt, Joy and Josephine is Monica Dickens at her best.

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Great grand daughter to Charles Dickens, Monica (1915-1992) was born into an upper middle class family. Disillusioned with the world she was brought up in - she was expelled from St Paul's Girls' School in London for throwing her school uniform over Hammersmith Bridge - Dickens then decided to go into service, despite coming from the privileged class; her experiences as a cook and general servant would form the nucleus of her first book, One Pair Of Hands in 1939.

Dickens married an American Navy officer, Roy O. Stratton, and spent much of her adult life in Massachusetts and Washington D.C., but the majority of writing continued to be set in Britain. Her book of 1953, No More Meadows, reflected her work with the NSPCC and she later helped to found the American Samaritans in Massachusetts. Between 1970 and 1971 she wrote a series of children's books known as The Worlds End Series which dealt with rescuing animals, and to some extent children. After the death of her husband in 1985, Dickens returned to England where she continued to write until her death aged 77.