Latchkey Ladies

A powerful and moving novel from 1921, about the lives and choices of modern women, by Canadian author Marjorie Grant. Latchkey ladies live alone or in shared rooms in London at the end of the First World War. They are determined to use their new freedoms and tread a fine line between independence and disaster. Maquita Gilroy is a Government clerk with a lively sense of self-preservation. Anne Carey is drifting between jobs, bored of her fiancé, and longing for something to give her life meaning. Then she meets Philip Dampier, a married man whose plays she admires. Petunia Garry, a beautiful teenage chorus girl with no background and dubious morals, is swept up by an idealistic country squire, determined to mould her into what he wants his wife to be. Gertrude Denby, an Admiral’s daughter and an endlessly patient companion to an irritating employer, is so very tired of living out her life in hired rooms. ‘Fear woke her in the defenceless hour of dawn. She sat up in bed and faced it at last, shivering so that her teeth chattered, but valiant. She was certain that she was going to have a child.’