Overview
- Discusses a rich array of texts written by working class women during the Victorian period, including extended diaries, protest and reform-minded memoirs, accounts of religious vocations, and “self-help” narratives
- Fills a much needed and neglected scholarly gap through its accumulation and synthesis of Victorian working-class women
- Provides in-depth analysis of each woman’s writing, considering the literary, social, and regional influences on each author
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Life Writing (PSLW)
Access this book
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Other ways to access
About this book
This volume is the first to identify a significant body of life narratives by working-class women and to demonstrate their inherent literary significance. Placing each memoir within its generic, historical, and biographical context, this book traces the shifts in such writings over time, examines the circumstances which enabled working-class women authors to publish their life stories, and places these memoirs within a wider autobiographical tradition. Additionally, Memoirs of Victorian Working-Class Women enables readers to appreciate the clear-sightedness, directness, and poignancy of these works.
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
- affect of Education Act of 1870 on working-class women
- Janet Bathgate
- Marianne Farningham
- Peig Sayers
- Victorian working-class women's experiences of abuse
- Janet Hamilton's Sketches of Village Life
- Victorian female servants
- Victorian female factory workers
- The Autobiography of a Charwoman
- Victorian working-class women's autobiographies
- daily lives of Victorian working-class women
- living conditions of Victorian female servants
- Victorian working class women's experience of institutions
- Susan Hopley, or the Adventures of a Maidservant
- Dinah Mulock Craik's Mistress and Maid
- Queen of the Penny Post
- experiences of rural Victorian working class women
- education of working-class girls in Victorian England
- The Autobiography of Rose Allen
- Victorian working class women and religion
Table of contents (10 chapters)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Florence S. Boos is Professor at the University of Iowa. She is the editor of Working-Class Women Poets of Victorian Britain: An Anthology (2008) and many articles and two special issues devoted to Victorian working-class writings. She is also the general editor of the William Morris Archive and the author/editor of several books on William Morris.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Memoirs of Victorian Working-Class Women
Book Subtitle: The Hard Way Up
Authors: Florence s. Boos
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Life Writing
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64215-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-64214-7Published: 19 December 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-87749-5Published: 24 May 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-64215-4Published: 02 December 2017
Series ISSN: 2730-9185
Series E-ISSN: 2730-9193
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 343
Number of Illustrations: 20 b/w illustrations
Topics: Nineteenth-Century Literature, British and Irish Literature, Comparative Literature