WORKING WOMEN IN LITERATURE & ART

This page includes two sections concerning literary works and other art forms produced by working women, or taking working women as their subjects. Please select from the following, or scroll down, for a brief description of Tamiment's holdings in each category and an annotated list of works:

NOVELS, PROSE, POETRY & OTHER LITERARY WORKS, 1840-present

SCHOLARSHIP ON WORKING WOMEN IN LITERATURE & ART

NOVELS, PROSE, POETRY & OTHER LITERARY WORKS, 1840-present

Tamiment also houses many works not specifically about women and labor by radical women writers, such as Genevieve Taggard and Muriel Rukeyser, that are generally not included here. Please check BobCat for specific titles.

For convenience, titles are arranged alphabetically by author within the following time periods:
1840-1889 || 1890-1919 || 1920-1945 || Post-1945

N.B.: The time period refers to when the work was produced and published, rather than the era it depicts. (E.g., recent works of historical fiction are listed in the post-1945 section, regardless of their subject.) Titles that span two or more of these chronological periods are listed under all relevant eras, so there are several duplicate entries.

HD6073.T42 U54 1998 Eisler, Benita, ed. The Lowell Offering: Writings by New England Mill Women (1840-1845). New York: Norton, 1998. Collection of writings with introductions placing them in historical context. (See also The Lowell Offering listed under "Periodicals.")

HD6096.A11 F3 Foner, Philip S., ed. The Factory Girls: A Collection of Writings on Life and Struggles in the New England Factories of the 1840's, By the Factory Girls Themselves, and the Story, in Their Own Words, of the First Trade Unions of Women Workers in the United States. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. Collection emphasizing work of more militant "factory girls," rather than the better-known writings of their more genteel counterparts, such as Lucy Larcom or Harriet Robinson.

PS3142 .S5 1983 Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart. The Silent Partner: A Novel and The Tenth of January, a Short Story. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1983, ©1871. Two early works concerning work, gender, and class differences in New England mill communities, by important feminist writer and social critic.

HD6096.L9 R7 1976 Robinson, Harriet H. Loom and Spindle: Or, Life among the Early Mill Girls; With a Sketch of "The Lowell Offering" and Some of its Contributors. Rev. ed. Kailua, Hawaii: Press Pacifica, 1976, ©1898. A "Lowell girl" traces the growth of Lowell, Mass., from a small factory town employing young, single Yankee women to an industrial city populated by immigrant laborers.

PS3507.R55 J4 1946 Dreiser, Theodore. Jennie Gerhardt. Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1946. Completed in 1910, tells the story of a domestic worker of the 1880s, a more obviously "virtuous" and domesticated working girl than Dreiser's better-known and more controversial heroine, Carrie Meeber (see entry below).
PS3507.R37 S4 _____. Sister Carrie. Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1927. A classic novel, first published in 1900, of a young woman's "coming [to] and toiling in the city." Follows Carrie Meeber, a shoe worker who eventually finds success on the stage in Chicago despite moral compromises (which sparked controversy among contemporary audiences). First novel of stature to validate a working girl's embrace of the new urban culture of consumption.

HX546 .F55 1987 Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley. Words on Fire: The Life and Writing of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Edited by Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987. Detailed, seventy-plus-page biographical introduction and excerpts from Flynn's prolific writings from 1905 through the 1960s, arranged thematically.

PS508.W7 W64 Hoffman, Nancy, and Florence Howe, eds. Women Working: An Anthology of Stories and Poems. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1979. Thirty-four stories and poems by well-known writers, such as Willa Cather, and relative unknowns. Organized thematically under "oppressive work," "satisfactory work," "family work," and "transforming work." Includes a general introduction and introductions to each section, and biographical information on authors.

HD8073.J6 A4 1985 Jones, Mother. The Correspondence of Mother Jones. Edited by Edward M. Steel. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985.
HD8072 .J7832 1983 _____. Mother Jones Speaks: Collected Writings and Speeches. Edited by Philip S. Foner. New York: Monad Press; Distributed by Pathfinder Press, 1983.
Collections of works by Mother Jones, the labor organizer who became among the most famous of radicals and perhaps the best-known of female labor leaders. Steel's collection includes hundreds of letters from 1900-1930, presented chronologically. Foner's collection provides over 700 pages of various works organized chronologically under speeches, congressional testimony, articles, interviews, and letters, also from ca. 1900 to 1930.

PS3525.A446 D53 1910 Malkiel, Theresa Serber. The Diary of a Shirtwaist Striker: A Story of the Shirtwaist Makers' Strike in New York. New York: The Co-Operative Press, 1910. A fictionalized narrative based on militant socialist author's observations of the famous "Uprising of the 20,000" in 1909.

HX84.M28 A25 1988 Marcy, Mary. The Tongue of Angels: The Mary Marcy Reader. Edited by Frederick C. Giffin. Selinsgrove, Penn.: Susquehanna University Press, 1988. Collected writings of the socialist journalist and editor of the International Socialist Review from the first two decades of the 20th century, the "golden age" of American socialism.

HD6095 .R4 Richardson, Dorothy. The Long Day; The Story of a New York Working Girl, As Told by Herself. New York: The Century Co., 1905. Account by Richardson, a middle-class woman forced to take an unskilled industrial job, of factory life at the turn of the century, with particular attention to importance of popular culture for "working girls." (This text is also reprinted in Women and Work, edited by William O'Neill, and listed below in the post-1945 section.)

PS3545.I18 F22 1917 Widdemer, Margaret. Factories, Poems. New York: H. Holt, 1917.
PS3545.I18 F2 _____. The Factories: With Other Lyrics. Philadelphia: John C. Winston, 1915.
Two overlapping, but not identical, collections of Widdemer's poetry on early twentieth-century industrial life.

PS3515.E596 P58 1998 Herbst, Josephine. Pity is Not Enough. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998, ©1933. Set in post-Civil War Georgia, explores a sister and brother's mutual struggles with advance of free market capitalism and decline of Northern commitment to racial justice.

PS508.W7 W64 Hoffman, Nancy, and Florence Howe, eds. Women Working: An Anthology of Stories and Poems. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1979. Thirty-four stories and poems by well-known writers, such as Willa Cather, and relative unknowns. Organized thematically under "oppressive work," "satisfactory work," "family work," and "transforming work." Includes a general introduction and introductions to each section, and biographical information on authors.

PS3523.E79 A6 1990 Le Sueur, Meridel. Ripening: Selected Work. 2nd ed. New York: Feminist Press; Distributed by the Talman Co., 1990. Three hundred-page collection of fiction and journalism from the 1920s through 1970s by radical feminist novelist whose work has received renewed attention from contemporary feminists. Includes bibliography and illustrations. One of the many works by Le Sueur available at Tamiment, including several novels and other collections of stories and essays (please see BobCat for other titles).

PS3523.U66 T6 Lumpkin, Grace. To Make My Bread. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995, ©1932. One of the major novels on the 1929 Gastonia textile strike. Traces a family of Appalachian mountaineers forced to seek work in a mill village, and eventually transformed into militant strikers. Shows women workers grappling with connections between race and class. (On Gastonia, see also Mary Heaton Vorse's Strike! and Myra Page's Gathering Storm.)

PS3531.A235 W5 1986 Page, Myra. Daughter of the Hills: A Woman's Part in the Coal Miners' Struggle. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1986, ©1950. Novel written in the 1930s, based on true story of family life and labor conflicts in the Cumberland Mountains as seen through female protagonist's eyes.
PS3531.A22 G3 Page, Dorothy Myra. Gathering Storm: A Story of the Black Belt. Moscow: Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR, 1930. Fictional account of famous 1929 textile strike in Gastonia, North Carolina (see also Mary Heaton Vorse's Strike! and Grace Lumpkin's To Make My Bread).

ML410.R763 N4 1940 Rome, Harold. Labor Stage, Inc. Presents I.L.G.W.U. Players in a Musical Review, New Pins and Needles. Music and lyrics by Harold J. Rome; sketches by Joseph Schrank; entire production staged by Robert H. Gordon. New York: New York Theatre Program Corp., 1940. A Playbill from the Windsor Theatre on one of the most successful stage productions coming out the labor movement, a musical on the lives of garment workers.

PS3543.O88 S8 Vorse, Mary Heaton. Strike! Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991, ©1930. One of several novels on the best known of Southern textile mill strikes of the late 1920s, at the Loray Mill in Gastonia, North Carolina. In this one, a preeminent labor journalist portrays conditions in the mills and mill villages and the unfolding of the conflict. (See also Myra Page's Gathering Storm and Grace Lumpkin's To Make My Bread).

PS3547.E95 S35 1995 Yezierska, Anzia. Salome of the Tenements. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995, ©1923. Based on real-life story of immigrant working-class activist Rose Pastor's fairytale romance with wealthy socialist Graham Stokes, but also evokes Yezierska's own ill-fated affair with renowned Progressive philosopher and educator John Dewey. A critique of the liberal vision of "the melting pot."

PS508.W73 C3 1990 Zandy, Janet, ed. Calling Home: Working-Class Women's Writings: An Anthology. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990. Essays, stories, poems, and oral histories, among other entries, from many authors, including Audre Lord, Tillie Olsen, Marge Piercy, Agnes Smedley, and Toni Cade Bambara.

PS3552.R622 I4 Brodine, Karen. Illegal Assembly. Brooklyn: Hanging Loose Press, 1980.
PS3552.R622 W66 1990 _____. Woman Sitting at the Machine, Thinking: Poems. Preface by Meridel Le Sueur; introduction by Merle Woo. Seattle: Freedom Socialist Publications, 1990.
Collected verse on work and other aspects of life from lesbian, socialist-feminist poet who labored as a teacher and typesetter.

PS3505.O5855 M7 1946 Cook, Fannie. Mrs. Palmer's Honey. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1946. Prize-winning novel by white author that traces African-American social and political struggles for equality through protagonist Honey Hoop, a domestic servant who becomes a union member and war worker.

PS3553.R247 I2 1981 Craig, Bette, and Joyce Kornbluh. I Just Wanted Someone to Know: A Documentary Play. Brooklyn, NY: Smyrna Press, 1981. Dramatic presentation of twenty-six wage-earning women's oral histories of life and work in various fields over the twentieth century.

HX546 .F55 1987 Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley. Words on Fire: The Life and Writing of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Edited by Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987. Detailed, seventy-plus-page biographical introduction and excerpts from Flynn's prolific writings from 1905 through the 1960s, arranged thematically.

PS508.W7 W64 Hoffman, Nancy, and Florence Howe, eds. Women Working: An Anthology of Stories and Poems. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1979. Thirty-four stories and poems by well-known writers, such as Willa Cather, and relative unknowns. Organized thematically under "oppressive work," "satisfactory work," "family work," and "transforming work." Includes a general introduction and introductions to each section, and biographical information on authors.

PS3561.U186 B7 1986 Kubicki, Jan. Breaker Boys: A Novel. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986. Story of boy's coming of age circa 1900 in a Pennsylvania coal mining town to which Mother Jones pays an organizing visit.

PS3523.E79 A6 1990 Le Sueur, Meridel. Ripening: Selected Work. 2nd ed. New York: Feminist Press; Distributed by the Talman Co., 1990. Three hundred-page collection of fiction and journalism from the 1920s through 1970s by radical feminist novelist whose work has received renewed attention from contemporary feminists. Includes bibliography and illustrations. One of the many works by Le Sueur available at Tamiment, including several novels and other collections of stories and essays (please see BobCat for other titles).

PS3562.L67 F7 1987 Llewellyn, Chris. Fragments from the Fire: The Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire of March 25, 1911: Poems. New York: Viking, 1987. An award-winning collection of twenty-five poems on the infamous garment industry disaster.

HD6095 .O58 O'Neill, William L., ed. Women at Work, including The Long Day, The Story of a New York Working Girl by Dorothy Richardson & Inside the New York Telephone Company by Elinor Langer. Chicago, Quadrangle Books, 1972. Two texts: first, account by Richardson of factory life circa 1900 (see listing in 1890-1919 section above). Second, Langer's account of the lives of her female co-workers at the phone company in the 1960s.

PS3537.A976 B74 1958 Saxton, Alexander. Bright Web in the Darkness. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1958. A novel that explores the experiences of women war workers in the shipyards of the San Francisco Bay area during WWII, and the efforts of African Americans to achieve regular standing as union members.
PS3569.A94 G7 1948 _____. The Great Midland. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1948. Fictionalized account of lives of Communist activists in Chicago in the Popular Front era before World War II, partly narrated through the consciousness of a first generation Polish-American woman.

PS3569.E84 C477 1995 Settle, Mary Lee. Choices. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1995. Novel about a privileged Virginia woman whose father's suicide amid the Great Depression pushes her into Red Cross relief work during a bloody coal miners' strike in Kentucky and a subsequent life of political reform work.
PS3569.E84 S22 1980 _____. The Scapegoat. New York: Random House, 1980. Novel of labor conflict in a West Virginia mining community in 1912, which features as main characters the renowned organizer Mother Jones and a daughter of a mine owner who advocates women's and workers' rights.

PS3570.A9255 U5 1988 Tax, Meredith. Union Square. New York: Morrow, 1988. Novel by feminist scholar that highlights political and labor struggles of immigrant working men and women in Manhattan from the 1920s through 1940s.

PS3572.A395 F7n Vandecarr, Annie B. Frances Neureld, A Novel Dealing with the First Stirrings to Life of the Labor Movement, and the Role of the American Socialists in One Great Struggle at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century. New York: Warwick Press, 1950. Labor conflict of the elaborate title is presented through experiences of dressmaker protagonist.

PS508.W73 C3 1990 Zandy, Janet, ed. Calling Home: Working-Class Women's Writings: An Anthology. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990. Essays, stories, poems, and oral histories, among other entries, from many authors, including Audre Lord, Tillie Olsen, Marge Piercy, Agnes Smedley, and Toni Cade Bambara.

SCHOLARSHIP ON WORKING WOMEN IN LITERATURE & ART

HD6058 .E44 1998 Ellis, Jacqueline. Silent Witnesses: Representations of Working-Class Women in the United States. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1998. A study of the photography of Dorothea Lange and Marion Post Wolcott, and the writings of Meridel Le Sueur, Tillie Olsen, and Esther Bubbly.

PS3565.L82 Z64 1993 Faulkner, Mara. Protest and Possibility in the Writing of Tillie Olsen. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993.

PS374.W6 H357 1995 Hapke, Laura. Daughters of the Great Depression: Women, Work, and Fiction in the American 1930s. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995.
PS374.P67 H37 1989 _____. Girls Who Went Wrong: Prostitutes in American Fiction, 1885-1917. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1989.
PS374.W6 H36 1992 _____. Tales of the Working Girl: Wage-Earning Women in American Literature, 1890-1925. New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1992.

PS374.F45 R33 1991 Rabinowitz, Paula. Labor & Desire: Women's Revolutionary Fiction in Depression America. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.

HD6079.2.U5 S36 1980a Schofield, Ann. "The Rise of the Pig-Headed Girl: An Analysis of the American Labor Press for Their Attitudes Toward Women, 1877-1920." Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Binghamton, 1980.