Description

Letters from Daisy, Margaret (neé Arnott) Oppen to her mother Polly, Mary Eleanor (neé Dixon) Arnott 1929–1934

Letters from Daisy is a collection of most of the letters written by Margaret (neé Arnott) Oppen to her mother Mary Eleanor (neé Dixon) Arnott from mid April 1929, approximately one year after her marriage to Hans Oppen and when she was already pregnant with her first child, Conrad, until late 1934 when they packed up and she returned to Australia with her family.

The loving and intimate relationship between Daisy and her mother infuses the letters. Daisy gives us a detailed view into the domestic life of her young family. She writes fluently and competently so that reading the letters more than 80 years later, they are neither tedious nor inadvertently obfuscatory. Appendices provide family trees and other information on Daisy Oppen’s life.

The majority of the photographs in this volume are not the now lost photographs Daisy sent home to her mother. They come from an album collated by Hans Oppen, Richard and Conrad’s father.

The letters have been transcribed by Alice Oppen, Daisy’s daughter-in-law and edited principally by Monica Oppen, Daisy’s granddaughter. Book design and layout by Felix Oppen, Daisy’s grandson.

ISBN: 978-0-6482171-0-7

336 pages, 124 letters, approx. 200 duotone (converted to cmyk) and colour images, Indigo digital printing.

One edition of 75 numbered copies.