A treasury of the 20th-century literature of women's lives - autobiographies, journals, memoirs - which is a celebration of life itself. It includes widely read writers from Woolf, McCarthy and de Beauvoir to Isak Dinsen, Jill Conway, Maya Angelou, Annie Dillard and Joan Didion. We encounter the worlds of a traditional midwife, a South African labour organiser and an aviation pioneer. We share in the loss of war (Marguerite Duras), the challenges of poverty (Carolina Maria de Jesus), and the joys and torments of life from childhood to old age.