'A history that populates the streets of colonial Sydney with entrepreneurial businesswomen earning their living in a variety of small – and sometimes surprising – enterprises.
'There are few memorials to colonial businesswomen, but if you know where to look you can find many traces of their presence as you wander the streets of Sydney. From milliners and dressmakers to ironmongers and booksellers; from publicans and boarding-house keepers to butchers and taxidermists; from school teachers to ginger-beer manufacturers: these women have been hidden in the historical record but were visible to their contemporaries.
'Catherine Bishop brings the stories of these entrepreneurial women to life, with fascinating details of their successes and failures, their determination and wilfulness, their achievements, their tragedies and the occasional juicy scandal. Until now we have imagined colonial women indoors as wives, and mothers, domestic servants or prostitutes. This book sets them firmly out in the open.' (Publication summary)
'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)
'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)
