Pam’s story: ‘An ‘If’ for Girls’ #2 Tuesday, 12 January 2010

I too (like Lizzie) have had this on my wall since a young lady. Then my daughter had it on her wall. Now she is about to have her first daughter. I was trying to find if I could purchase a new copy of this framed for current generation! Have you seen it? Thank you and so happy to hear someone else considered this dear.

Lizzie’s story: An ‘If’ for Girls… Wednesday, 25 November 2009

With apologies to Mr. Rudyard Kipling
by Elizabeth Lincoln Otis

I never carried this poem in my pocket, but on my wall since I was 16 – I saved this framed poem from the bin when the English mistress decreed a clear-out in my school library (a girls’ school, needless to say). Such an awful parody of the magnificent ‘If’, and to us today so sexist and patronising  … and yet, well – there could be worse messages for life …

Someone else clearly had the same idea!

Lizzie MacGregor has been a lover of poetry since she was twelve, a librarian since she was twenty-one, and has been at the SPL since 1993, happily combining professional practice and personal preference. Library training was done with Lanarkshire County Libraries, and a degree in Librarianship at Strathclyde University was followed by a cataloguer’s post at Edinburgh University Library. At the SPL, as well as cataloguing and indexing, Lizzie looks after the periodicals collection and answers reference enquiries.