High Wages (Classic or Standard) by Dorothy Whipple

‘“Wanted: a young lady to assist in the shop. Apply within.” Jane’s heart beat faster. She straightened up. “Well…” she breathed. She bent down and read again. “Well…. I never…”’

When eighteen-year-old Jane gets a job in a draper’s shop in a small town in Lancashire in 1912, so begins a great adventure.

At first she delights in learning to cut fabric, getting to know the customers and making friends with the other shop-girls, but the terrible working conditions – low wages, too-small portions of kippers and bread, tidying up until late on Christmas Eve – lower her spirits. She spends her days off visiting the department stores of Manchester and London, which teach her as much about unwanted male attention as about the business of clothes, but before long an unexpected turn of events allows her, thrillingly, to open her own dress shop; amid struggles with the cleaning and cooking, trips to the local library, and a painful love affair, she continues to fight for the right to realise her own potential.

As Jane Brocket writes in the Preface: ‘In a delightful book full of details of clothes and furnishings, bust-bodices and gloves, Dorothy Whipple creates a powerful argument for the need for women to work, not for political or primary economic reasons, but for self-fulfilment and for the realisation of talent and potential.’ 

A lively portrayal of working class life in the shadow of WW1. Smart and delightfully funny.

Endpaper

'Farm Scene', a 1930 dress fabric by Cryséde Ltd. The company was well known for its beautiful and unusual designs which would have been admired, and stocked in her shop, by Jane in High Wages. 

Format:Paperback / softback 316 pages
Publisher:Persephone Books Ltd
Imprint:Persephone Books Ltd
ISBN:9781906462604 / 9781903155752
Published:17 Oct 2024
Classifications:Classic fiction (pre c 1945), Historical fiction