Young Mrs Burton is the third in a series of autobiographical novels written by Margaret Penn, following on from Manchester Fourteen Miles and The Foolish Virgin. It tells of Hilda Winstanley's (Margaret Penn's) marriage to a journalist who became an officer in the First World War and returned from the war injured, a hero, alcoholic and unemployable. She had to turn, painfully, from being the ideal young upper-middle-class wife immured from the practicalities of living into being the family breadwinner. At a crisis of total destitution, she had to send her own children to be adopted: a traumatic - or possibly providential - repetition of her own history as related in Manchester Fourteen Miles. The three volumes were popular with reviewers and readers in the late 1940s but then fell out of print. They now hold new appeal, as an important record of a fascinating period of social history, as well as a moving and evocative account of one woman's life. Cambridge University Press is delighted to make them available for a new generation to enjoy.
