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.

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

Autorentext

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.

Inhalt

1 Introduction: The Hard Way Up.- 2 Uneven Access: Working-Class Women and the Education Acts.- 3 Under Physical Siege: The Early Victorian Autobiographies of Elizabeth Stories and Mary Prince.- 4 Memoir and People's History in Janet Hamilton's Sketches of Village Life.- 5 The Annals of the Poor--Rural and Conversion Narratives: Elizabeth Campbell, Christian Watt, Elizabeth Oakley, Mrs. Collier, Jane Andrew, and Barbara Farquhar.- 6 The Servant Writes Back: Mary Ann Ashford's Life of a Licensed Victualler's Daughter.- 7 Ellen Johnston: Autobiographical Writings of The Factory Girl.- 8 From Servant to Schoolmistress: Janet Bathgate and Mary Smith.- 9 Truth,' 'Fiction' and Collaboration in The Autobiography of a Charwoman.- 10 Concluding Remarks.