ABSTRACT
Families, long-separated by war service, imprisonment or internment, were gadually reunited. Wives faced ‘the struggle to deal with…postwar problems’ in partnership with ‘a worn-out…stranger’. A fortunate minority had sustained companionship by correspondence. It would be wrong to assume that letter writing was a skill confined to the upper and middle classes-many children who attended elementary schools were fluent writers by the time they left.
