Women’s commercial activities are typically buried in the historical record. Only recently, for example, have scholars clarified just how deeply involved women were in the industrial revolution. This book seeks to up-end another common assumption: that women situated on higher rungs of the social ladder “did not work.”
As this book’s contributors show, middle-class women in a variety of European regions were engaged in a wide range of economic activities including publishing, retailing, investing, and more. As one writer notes of France, “At century’s end, one could find Lille women who were gunsmiths, watchmakers, printers, makers of glass eyes, bookbinders, harness makers, coopers, blacksmiths, lime makers, roofers, painters, and contractors of public works.”
These essays are scholarly but provide surprises and insights for all readers. Though millinery and dressmaking were trades considered by contemporary society only “a little above the vulgar,” they never lacked for applicants. Like certain corporate fields today, dressmaking attracted ambitious women because of its direct career path toward independence. In Vienna, affluent businesswomen and struggling laundresses alike tended to combine workplace and residence: “One sees a definite advantage in combining family responsibilities with the business,” the writer observes.
Contributors are based in Sweden, Austria, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, the U.K., Canada, and the U.S. The editors are Robert Beachy, an assistant professor of History at Goucher College, Beatrice Craig, an associate professor of History at the University of Ottawa, and Alastair Owens, a lecturer in Geography at Queen Mary, University of London.