Resources

If you would like to know more about some of the themes covered by this blog, please see the list of further resources and publications below. This is by no means an exhaustive list and I will be adding and updating with more texts over time.

My Publications

Birt, S., ‘Skills, training, and kinship networks: women as economic migrants in early modern London’s livery companies’, in Gender and migration in historical perspective : institutions, labour and social networks, 16th to 20th centuries ed. by B. Zucca Micheletto (Switzerland, 2022)

Birt, S., ‘Artistic households: the economics of creative work in seventeenth-century London’ Historical Research, 94:265 (2021), pp. 489–507: https://doi.org/10.1093/hisres/htab016

Birt, S., ‘Women, guilds and the tailoring trades: the occupational training of Merchant Taylors’ Company apprentices in early modern London’, The London Journal, 46:2 (2021), pp. 146-164 https://doi.org/10.1080/03058034.2020.1810881

Birt, S., (2022). Review of The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women’s Lives, 1660-1900, by Barbara Burman and Ariane Fennetaux, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 34:2 (2022), pp. 240-242 https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/47201. Recent free-to-read reviews including mine can be found here: http://ecf.humanities.mcmaster.ca/bookreviews/.

Read more about my project ‘Shops on the Strand’ at Strandlines: https://www.strandlines.london/2020/10/26/shops-on-the-strand-sarah-birt/

A blog post featuring new research from my project has been published on the Women’s History Network blog: https://womenshistorynetwork.org/old-round-court-and-gold-lace-ann-renneys-shop-on-the-strand-by-dr-sarah-birt/

Online resources

British and Irish Furniture Makers Online (BIFMO): Faces Behind the Furniture, 1500-1914: https://bifmo.history.ac.uk

City Women in the 18th Century: An outdoor exhibition of women traders in Cheapside, London: http://citywomen.hist.cam.ac.uk

Clothworkers’ Company Online Catalogue: https://www.clothworkers.co.uk/history/archive/

Early Modern Female Book Ownership: https://earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com

Forms of Labour: Gender, Freedom and Experience of Work in the Preindustrial Economy: http://formsoflabour.exeter.ac.uk

Layers of London: Recording the Layers of London’s rich heritage: https://www.layersoflondon.org

Records of Early English Drama: Civic London 1558-1642: https://civiclondon.wordpress.com

# Rijksmuseumfromhome: Bianca about a very, very wide dress:

The Junto blog, Jennifer Van Horn, ‘An Indian Chintz Gown: Slavery and Fashion’: https://earlyamericanists.com/2018/09/12/an-indian-chintz-gown-slavery-and-fashion/

The many-headed monster: https://manyheadedmonster.wordpress.com/

The Power of Petitioning in Seventeenth-Century England: https://petitioning.history.ac.uk

The Records of London’s Livery Companies Online (ROLLCO): https://www.londonroll.org

Select Bibliography

Ågren, M., (ed.), Making a Living, Making a Difference: Gender and Work in Early Modern European Society (Oxford, 2017)

Ashelford, J., The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society 1500-1914 (London, 1996)

Bendall, S. A., ‘Women’s Dress and the Demise of the Tailoring Monopoly: Farthingale-makers, body-makers and the changing textile marketplace of seventeenth-century London’, Textile History, early view online: https://doi.org/10.1080/00404969.2021.1913470

Buck, A., ‘Mantuamakers and Milliners: Women Making and Selling Clothes in Eighteenth Century Bedfordshire’, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, 72 (1993), pp. 142-155

Clark, A., Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1919)

Collins, J., ‘Jane Holt, Milliner, and Other Women in Business: Apprentices, Freewomen and Mistresses in The Clothworkers’ Company, 1606–1800’, Textile History, 44:1 (2013), pp. 72-94

Edwards, L., How to Read a Dress: A Guide to Changing Fashion from the 16th to the 20th Century (London, 2017)

Erickson, A. L., ‘Wealthy businesswomen, marriage and succession in eighteenth-century London’, Business History, early view online (2022) https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2022.2036131

Erickson, A. L., ‘Esther Sleepe, Fan-Maker, and Her Family’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 42:2 (2018), pp. 15-37

Erickson, A. L., ‘Eleanor Mosley and other milliners in the City of London companies 1700-1750’, History Workshop Journal, 71:1 (2011), pp. 147-172

Erickson, A. L., ‘Married women’s occupations in eighteenth-century London’, Continuity and Change, 23:2 (2008), pp. 267-307

Gowing, L., ‘Girls on Forms: Apprenticing Young Women in Seventeenth-Century London’, Journal of British Studies, 55:3 (2016), pp. 447-473

Hemingway, J., ‘Millinery and Old Lace: Miss Jane Clarke of Regent Street’, Textile History, 43:2 (2012), pp. 200-222

Hubbard, E., City Women: Money, Sex, and the Social Order in Early Modern London (New York, 2012)

Hunt, M., The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680-1780 (London, 1996)

Korda, N., Labors Lost: Women’s Work and the Early Modern English Stage (Pennsylvania, 2011)

Lemire, B., Dress, Culture and Commerce: The English Clothing Trade before the Factory, 1660-1800 (London, 1997)

McIntosh, M. K., Working Women in English Society, 1300-1620 (Cambridge, 2005)

Mui, H., and L. H. Mui, Shops and Shopkeeping in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1989)

North, S., 18th-Century Fashion in Detail (London, 2018)

Phillips, N., Women in Business, 1700-1850 (Suffolk, 2006)

Sanderson, E. C., Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh (London, 1996)

Saunders, A., (ed.), The Royal Exchange (London, 1997)

Sharpe, P., ‘Dealing with Love: The Ambiguous Independence of the Single Woman in Early Modern England’, Gender & History, 11:1 (1999), pp. 209-232

Shepard, A., ‘Minding their own business: married women and credit in early eighteenth-century London’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 25 (2015), pp. 53-74

Shepard, A., Accounting for Oneself: Worth, Status, & the Social Order in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2015)

Simonton, D., ‘“Sister to the tailor”: Guilds, gender and the needle trades in eighteenth-century Europe’, in Early Professional Women in Northern Europe, c. 1650-1850 ed. by J. Ilmakunnas, M. Rahikainen, and K. Vainio-Korhonen (New York, 2017), pp. 135-157

Smith, S. D., ‘Women’s Admission to Guilds in Early-Modern England: The Case of the York Merchant Tailor’s Company, 1693-1776’, Gender & History, 17:1 (2005), pp. 99-126

Spence, C., London in the 1690s: A Social Atlas (London, 2000)

Tankard, D., ‘”They tell me they were in fashion last year”: Samuel and Elizabeth Jeake and Clothing Fashions in Late Seventeenth-Century London and Rye’, Costume, 50:1 (2016), pp. 20-41

Walsh, C., ‘Social Meaning and Social Space in the Shopping Galleries of Early Modern London’ in A Nation of Shopkeepers: Five Centuries of British Retailing, ed. by J. Benson, and L. Ugolini (London, 2003), pp. 52-79

Whittle, J., and M. Hailwood, ‘The gender division of labour in early modern England’, The Economic History Review, 73:1 (2020), pp. 3-32

Whittle, J., ‘A Critique of Approaches to “Domestic Work”: Women, Work and the Preindustrial Economy’, Past and Present, 243:1 (2019), pp. 35-70