This is a pioneering study in a field long neglected by serious scholars. It traces the changing role and status of middle-class women from the perhaps parasitic "lady of leisure" of the mid-nineteenth century to the independent working woman of Edwardian England. Victorian Ladies at Work studies closely the position of women in the traditionally feminine fields of teaching and nursing and in new fields which were opening up for women, such as shop and clerical work and the civil service. In each case the changing position of working women is related to broader themes and wider developments in English society--the rapid growth of an industrialized and urban economy, the Radical reform tradition and the practical operations of the "Victorian conscience," and the democratization of society generally as exemplified by the advent of popular education, the rise of the professions, and the growth of trade unionism and of the Labour Party.In addition the book examines attentively the special problems which Victorian working women encountered as women, and relates these to the position of working women and the woman's movement of the present day.