Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents; Introduction: Finding the first industrial woman -- Habits of industry: laboring women and agricultural change,1750-1800 -- The art of women and the business of men: Womens work and the diary industry -- The quarrel with womens work -- spinning and the displacement of female labour -- A new world of work:women workers and the declining status of cottage industry -- Women in the age of malthus:Political economy and the feminization of the female worker -- Recasting women in the workshop of the world: Middle class authority and the female poor -- The other victorian woman: The domestic serevant in the industrial age.