The book illustrates the daily life and struggles of women married to coal miners in County Durham, United Kingdom, through the eyes of the great great grandmother of the author, Hannah Hall. There is a lack of information about the role of women in the Durham Coalfield, so the author told the story with information from government records and family memories.
The experience of women in the nineteenth century has generated a lot of research in recent decades. This book presents recent scholarship available in a concise resource, providing thus an authoritative source of information and interpretation. The authors emphasize areas in which scholars have identified important changes (such as suffrage and reform), topics in which researchers are now making great strides (such as racial, ethnic, religious, and regional diversity), and innovative and relatively recent explorations (for example, work on female sexuality). Accessible overview articles and alphabetical encyclopedia-like entries are combined in a comprehensive volume. .Part 1 contains a historiographical essay followed by a ten-chapter narrative overview. These chapters include discussions of families and households, labor and the workforce, religion and morality, feminism and equal rights, reform and voluntarism, and more. Part 2 is an A-to-Z listing of concise entries on key terms, notable figures, political movements, social and religious organizations, and legislation.