Juliet Appleton is an officer's daughter who is forced to make her own way in the world after her father's death. Having been trained in typewriting and shorthand, she obtains employment at a law office, only to find that she cannot bear to work with her unpleasant colleagues and employer. Juliet possesses some of the characteristics of the infamous "New Woman": she has attended Girton College, she smokes cigarettes, and she travels the countryside on her bicycle. After various adventures, Juliet finds a new opportunity as a type-writer girl for a publishing company. She falls in love with her employer, and he with her, but complications inevitably ensue. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Canadian-born Grant Allen was a prolific professional author of popular science texts on evolution as well as a fiction writer. The Type-Writer Girl(1897) is one of only two novels he wrote under a female pseudonym, possibly to lend credibility to his first-person female narrator. The Type-Writer Girlinvokes tensions typical of the fin de siècle concerning evolution, technology, and the role of women. This Broadview edition provides a reliable text at a very reasonable price. It contains textual notes but no appendices.
This is a rather amusing story that falls along convention fiction patterns--at least until the end. Though the novel does address the concerns and fears of young, well-bred English women thrust into the workplace, I question whether Grant Allen wrote this book to poke fun at the working girl, or sympathizes with her. All in all, The Type-writer Girl is a quick, easy read--so don't let the publication date fool you, not every "old" book is written in the florid manner of Dickens or James.
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