Representing Female Artistic Labour, 1848–1890

Patricia Zakreski's interdisciplinary study draws on fiction, prose, painting, and the periodical press to expand and redefine our understanding of women's relationship to paid work during the Victorian period. Looking specifically at sewing, art, writing, and acting, Zakreski shows how representations of creative women, by authors such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dinah Craik, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and Charlotte Yonge, participated in and shaped new forms of mainstream culture.