This search enables you to access the summaries of the 444 interviews in the collection. To find out more about the interview summaries we suggest that you read about the background to interview summaries.
The search form contains categorical fields (date of birth, sex, occupational class etc.) and a free-text search box. You may search the interview summaries in a number of ways:
For further ideas on how to use the summaries in your search strategy or if you are having difficulty using this search, please see help on searching. Please note that search terms are not case-sensitive.
Edwardians Online interview summary records provide categorical information about the interview subject and a structured summary of the full interview text.
Categorical information includes details such as date of birth, sex, place of residence at the time of interview, final occupation and occupational class. These fields typically contain discrete values.
By contrast, the summary fields contain a rich description of key information in the interview, in a particular theme. Themes include: family, marriage, housing, education, parent's work history, work history, political affiliation, religious background, health and childbirth, leisure activities, and a miscellaneous category.
The interview summaries were created by a number of part-time research assistants, during follow-up work to the original project. The aim of the summary was to provide users with access to a manageable version of the interview content - the full text interviews may be up to 80,000 words long! The researchers followed guidelines for creating summaries of the texts, selecting significant facts and key events in the various themes. This was, however, a subjective process and consequently the level of detail and style may vary in different records.
