Seven Girls. [Sketches of factory life] Agnes Spencer CLARKE. Publication Date: 1899 Condition: Very Good

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Title: Seven Girls. [Sketches of factory life]

Publisher: Spencer & Greenhough: Leicester; Simpkin, Marshall & Co.: London

Publication Date: 1899

Binding: Hardcover

Book Condition: Very Good

Edition: 1st Edition

[7], 208 pages. Decorative floral endpapers. 13 x 19 cm. Original tan cloth. Spine with gilt lettering and brown decorative head and tail pieces. Upper cover with gilt lettering (very slight handling marks, corners very slightly bumped). Dedicated to Lady Jeune, a London County Council alderman from 1910 to 1927, a very involved philanthropist who also wrote at least 50 periodical essays, which challenged the idea that Victorian middle and upper-middle class women were not capable of serious nonfiction writing. Agnes Spencer Clarke (1870-1965) like her sister Berthe, Agnes (Aggie) Clarke was a Suffragette and member of the Women's Social and Political Union. Her mother was a straw bonnet maker and her father was a staff sergeant in the Leicester militia. Agnes began work in the hosiery trade, though in 1907, Sylvia Pankhurst, describes Agnes as supporting her family by collecting laundry accounts. However, she also worked as a proof reader, probably for the Leicester Guardian. Agnes wrote three novels on socialist themes. In 1901, she described herself as an author, having had her first novel, Glenroyst: A Story of Old Time Leicestershire published in 1898 by Batty & Company. A year later, her second novel, Seven Girls, Sketches Of A Factory Life' published by Spencer & Greenhough appeared. This was about girls working in a laundry and a strike is one of the incidents in the book. Her third novel, First Woman Minister was published in by Stockwell in 1941 and was a thinly veiled account of Unitarian pioneer, the Rev. Gertrude von Petzold of whom she was a supporter. Gertrude von Petzold was appointed minister of Narborough Road Free Christian Church (Unitarian) in 1904, thus becoming Britain's first woman minister. Agnes' brother Alfred and his wife were married by Gertrude von Petzold and it is possible that they were the first couple to be married by a woman minister in the Britain. Clarke also published a serial novel, The Wooing of Thea, in the Midland Free Press in Aug- Dec 1907. It was about an orphan girl with intellectual ambitions who is rescued by a poor but honourable lodger from her drink-sodden aunt's unsuitable house, to be raised by her newly discovered relations in the North. Agnes Clarke contributed stories to the Leicester Guardian and wrote regularly for the Midlands Free Press frequently reposting on the Suffrage movement. From 1902, she probably wrote under the sobriquet "Lydia" for the Leicester Pioneer. Although, Agnes Clarke was involved in the Suffragette movement, she escaped arrest. She recalled being taken in charge by a tall policeman with red hair for the heinous crime of attempting to speak to Winston Churchill. "Thanks to his [Churchill's] kindly interposition on my behalf, I was released and felt very sorry for the abashed policeman". Whilst speaking at a meeting at Northampton Square, she was hit by an orange thrown at her by a male shop assistant. She was critical of suffragists like Edith Gittens as being one of the "women who wanted the vote but would risk nothing for it-they preferred the safe policy of conciliation". WorldCat locates only seven copies worldwide (four in the UK:- British Library, Oxford, Cambridge & National Library of Scotland). Seller Inventory # 5056