Letters of Ethel Cooper

The excerpts of letters featured on this website are taken from a published book Behind the lines: one woman’s war, 1914-1918, edited by Decie Denholm.

The original letters are located at the State Library of South Australia, D 5761(L)

Ethel wrote 227 letters from Leipzig to her sister Emmie in Adelaide, one a week, during the war. There was no chance of posting the letters, but the first 52 were smuggled to Switzerland, and the remainder were hidden, first between the pages of scores of Beethoven’s string quartets and later in the cavity of a friends dining table. Ethel sent them from England when she was repatriated in 1918.

Emmie then deposited them in the State Library collection.