The following is a list of the references I received in response to my
information request on the more abysmal conditions of the early
industrial revolution labor experiences of women and children -- the
annotations were provided by the posters. Thanks again for taking
the time to send these valuable references.
Diane
[1.] Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York
1789-1860.
[2.] For the U.S. a really good read is Thomas Dublin's work,
especially his collection of letters
by New England factory workers. They provide a lot of insights into
the lifeways of women and their families. Dublin, Thomas, Women at Work:
The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts,
1826-1860, New York: Columbia University Press, 1979; and Dublin, Thomas,
Farm to Factory: Women's Letters, 1830-1860, New York: Columbia
University Press, 1981.
[3.] For England Jane Humphries is a source on the relationship between
family and work and early
industrialization -- not necessarily concentrating on how
"deplorable" it was, but as I recall on how people adapted to
it. But I'm sure there'd be a lot of information on general
conditions in her work. 'Enclosures, Common Rights and Women: The
Proletarianization of Families in late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth
Century Britain', Journal of Economic History, Vol.L, No. 1, March
1990, pp. 17-42.
[4.] An early, but still classic work, remains Ivy Pinchbeck's
Women Workers and the Industrial
Revolution, 1750-1850 (1930).
[5.] Regenia Gagnier, Subjectivities: A History of
Self-Representation in Britain 1832-1920 (Oxford UP, 1991) includes lots
of references on the topic, though it is primarily a study of
self-representation in lifewriting.
[6.] EP Thompson's major work, The Making of the British Working
Class.
[7.] There are two fantastic collections of English women's accounts of
their experiences in the industrial revolution: Margaret Llewelyn Davies
(ed.), Life as We have Known it; and Maud Pember Reeves, Round About a
Pound a Week (1913).
[8.] Carolyn Tuttle, Hard at Work in Factories and Mines: The
Economics of Child Labor During the British Industrial Revolution
(1999).
[9.] Deborah Valenze, The First Industrial Woman (1995).
[10.] Reports of the various Royal Commissions on women and
children's labour.
[11.] Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufactures 1700-1820: Industry,
Innovation and
Work in Britain (1994, 2nd ed.) London/New York:Routledge is very good.
[12.] Jane Rendall, Women in an Industrializing Society: England
1750-1880
(1990) Oxford/Cambridge, Massachusetts: Basil Blackwell.
[13.] Elizabeth Robert's Women's Work 1840-1940 (1988) London:
Macmillan discusses women in an
industrialising society.
[14.] David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
[15.] Georges Duby's A History of Women in the West, Volume IV
[16.] Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England
(1845)
[17.] Parliamentary committee report records that Karl Marx quotes
from in Capital.
