AustLit

'Illuminating the economic position of women in the colonial urban landscape has long been a challenging task for historians. Those engaged in the “oldest profession” have had their fair share of scholarly attention, and twentieth-century feminist historians have aptly addressed the economic significance of women’s roles as household managers and mothers. But for women engaged in a “respectable” living outside of the domestic sphere, their presence in historical scholarship is comparatively diminutive. Where’s the scandal and intrigue in a woman successfully avoiding “moral ruin”? What is there to excite the reader in the stories of steady trades and economic success — of those flying under the radar of both the law and high society? A tendency to treat the history of women’s employment in colonial Australia as one of economic imperative and survival, rather than one of desire, ambition and achievement, has left a vacuum in historical scholarship that is only now being filled.' (Introduction)