Titanic Survivor, Special Centennial Edition Paperback – Special Edition, 14 April 2012

I rate the autobiography written by Violet Jessop 5 stars - fascinating, well-written and interesting. A really good insight not just on her survival of the Titanic (which only covered in only 2 chapters) but into life on the ocean from the turn of the 20th century to the 1940s. If you are only interested in the Titanic experience you may be disappointed, as it is only a slim slice of her life on board many ships as a first class stewardess. But it is a really interesting commentary on the world of the poor and super rich; sexism and the problems faced by a pretty working woman in that era; the time of prohibition; and the situation during the First World War on board a hospital ship, where Violet experienced a second sinking of her ship (which was much more traumatic than the Titanic sinking). So many fascinating cultural and historical details are here that cannot be read in history books.However, it was spoilt two-fold: once by the editor who insisted on putting personal comments throughout - frequently only highlighting what Violet had already said in a kind of irritating way people intersperse personal comments into a really good film when you wish they would stay silent! I think he rarely offered anything of any interest;and where he did contribute to the knowledge of a certain situation it should be in the form of footnotes which we can look up ourselves either at the end of the chapters or the end of the book. It was an annoying and self-gratifying interruption into a very well written and interesting biography.Secondly - whoever changed this into the kindle format should not dare to charge for this as the scanning mistakes were so frequent that there were typos on at least each page.Whoever is making money from the cost of buying this book really needs to go back and improve their dreadful typing/scanning to make it readable. In most cases you can work out what was meant, but again - it was an irritating and annoying distraction from this fascinating read. I am angry that it cost so much with so many mistakes.Still; this was a very interesting book which I was very glad to have stumbled upon. I wanted to mark it 3 stars as I was so annoyed by the above but don't want to put people off reading Violet's excellent life story.

Extremely informative,a real eye opener into an incredible woman's life .

A great read

An excellent read spoiled by the number of mistakes requiring reading over to extract the meaning. The collator has done a great job turning Violets memoirs into a historical account.

Great

Excellent read

Excellent read very true to life, interesting and above all made me think what life must of been like in those daysand the level of tragic sadness for their loss in this awful maiden voyage, the author survived and went on to havea good full life.

Like many people I bought this hoping for detailed accounts of what it was like for a stewardess aboard the Olympic-class ships. I was very disappointed. Accounts aboard all three ships were very short and lacking in detail. Miss Jessop must have known the significance of being a survivor of the Titanic, even in the 1930s, when this account was supposedly written; but so much of what a Titanic/Olympic-class aficionado expects is missing and it gives the impression that the writer didn't consider her experiences important enough to write a detailed exposition. Considering how little of this book is taken up by writing on the subject of RMS Titanic, it really ought not to be marketed as primarily a 'Titanic survivor' account, and more of a series of 'maritime stewardess' accounts.Too much irrelevant nonsense about her relationships with other people, none of which had any significance outside of the writer's own existence and there are too many instances about how she felt about some man or some woman, and very little on how she felt about the vessels or even the voyages, particularly April 14th/15th.Furthermore, the accounts seem very badly written. How much of this was due to the interventions by the editor Mr Maxtone-Graham, i don't know.Overall, a terrible disappointment and a wasted opportunity.