Work and Wages

12mo, pp. [2], 178; engraved addition title and frontispiece; lacking front free endpaper; original blue cloth decorated in gilt and blind, gilt edges

One of a series of thirteen titles named 'Tales for the People and their Children' that Mary Howitt wrote for publisher Thomas Tegg in the 1840s that were designed to promote middle-class virtues among working class families. They were also more sentimentally described as 'marked by a graceful intelligence, and a simple tenderness, which at once charm the reader, and win their affections for the author.'

The story is chiefly the life of Jane Ford, a servant moving from one household to another, striving to do her best for her employers, who on the whole are mean, tight fisted and critical of her relentless hard work for them. All does come right in the end after many vicissitudes when Jane saves a household from a fire and everyone realises what a true and good person she really is.

Mary Howitt (1799-1888), author, translator, poet (author of the famous poem ^gThe Spider and the Fly^g), woman of letters and friend of the Brownings, Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell. She was the first translator of Andersen's Fairy Tales, the work by which she is chiefly known to the English speaking world. She met and married another Quaker, William Howitt (1792-1879), settling in Nottingham and, from 1843, in London. Together they embarked on a long collaboration in writing (over 180 books) and social activism, and published numerous volumes of poetry. The family moved away from the Quakers to join the Unitarians, and eventually the Spiritualists - and late in life Mary converted to Roman Catholicism. Throughout their lives she and William were advocates of social reform: the Anti-Corn Law League, anti-enclosure movements, the Married Women's Property Committee, women's emancipation, and the extension of the franchise.