Jean Lucey Pratt
Jean Lucey Pratt | |
|---|---|
| Born | 18 October 1909 Wembley, England |
| Died | August 1986 |
| Occupation(s) | Author, bookseller |
| Years active | 1925–1986 |
| Known for | Mass-Observation diaries |
Jean Lucey Pratt (18 October 1909–August 1986) was an English author and bookseller, whose anonymous Mass-Observation diaries from the 1940s gained recognition posthumously through three widely read volumes edited by Simon Garfield. Her private journals, spanning from 1925 to 1986, were published in A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt (2015).
Life
Pratt was born in Wembley on 18 October 1909. Her father practiced architecture, while her mother was a concert pianist who passed away when Jean was thirteen. She had an elder brother who worked for the Eastern Telegraph Company. Pratt attended Princess Helena College, assisted in her father’s architectural practice, studied architecture at Ealing Art School, and later pursued journalism at University College London. After completing her education, she resided in London with aspirations of becoming a writer but encountered difficulties getting her novels and short stories published.
In 1939, she relocated to a countryside cottage in Burnham Beeches, where she remained for the rest of her life. During the Second World War, Pratt was employed in publicity at High Duty Alloys located in Slough.
Her 1952 biography of eighteenth-century actress Margaret Woffington, titled Lovely Peggy: The Life and Times of Margaret Woffington and released under the alias Janet Camden Lucey by Hurst and Blackett, was praised for its thorough insight into theatrical history. Pratt also contributed articles on architecture, including a piece published in the Architectural Review.
In 1955, she established The Little Bookshop in Farnham Common, focusing on literature about cats. The shop became the UK’s largest supplier of specialized cat books, catering to international customers through mail order. Pratt retired from managing the bookshop in 1981 and passed away in August 1986.
Diaries
Beginning in 1939, Pratt submitted diaries to Mass-Observation, a British initiative aimed at collecting personal narratives. Her writings are preserved at the University of Sussex and were incorporated into three volumes edited by Simon Garfield: Our Hidden Lives (2005), which covers the postwar years up to 1948; along with We Are at War (2006) and Private Battles (2007), both drawing on wartime entries. Garfield assigned Pratt the pseudonym "Maggie Joy Blunt" and described her as "a lyrical and talented writer in her mid-thirties living near Slough". The book Our Hidden Lives was adapted into a BBC Four film in 2005 featuring Sarah Parish.
Besides these publications, Pratt kept a personal diary continuously from 1925 until shortly before her death in 1986, encompassing 45 exercise books filled with hundreds of pages. Her niece later authorized Garfield to curate and publish selections from these journals, resulting in A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt (2015, Canongate Books), followed by a paperback release in 2016. The diaries were entrusted to Cats Protection, which holds their copyright. The book received widespread acclaim: the London Review of Books described it as a "priceless find," while both Hilary Mantel and Rachel Cooke named it among their top reads of 2015 in the New Statesman. Mantel dubbed Pratt "the siren of Slough" and lauded the work as "wholly absorbing and deeply entertaining," with Cooke calling it "the most moving and important book" she encountered that year.
Bibliography
- Garfield, Simon (2005). Our Hidden Lives: The Remarkable Diaries of Postwar Britain, Ebury Press.
- Garfield, Simon (2006). We Are at War: The Diaries of Five Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times, Ebury Press.
- Garfield, Simon (2007). Private Battles: How the War Almost Defeated Us, Ebury Press.
- Lucey, Janet Camden (1952). Lovely Peggy: The Life and Times of Margaret Woffington, Hurst & Blackett.
- Pratt, Jean Lucey (2016). A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt. Edited by Simon Garfield. Edinburgh: Canongate Books.
External links
- 1909 births
- 1986 deaths
- 20th-century English diarists
- 20th-century English women writers
- 20th-century English businesspeople
- 20th-century English businesswomen
- English biographers
- English booksellers
- English women non-fiction writers
- People from Wembley
- Writers from the London Borough of Brent
- English women diarists
- Alumni of University College London