Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century

"Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century" by Alice Clark was originally published in 1919, and was the first comprehensive analysis of the daily lives of ordinary women in early modern England. It remains the most wide-ranging introduction to the subject. Clark uses a variety of documentary sources to illuminate the experience of women in the past. Clark's conclusions about the effects of industrial capitalism on women's working conditions and contribution to the economy were controversial in her own time and remain so today.