A New England Girlhood

Arriving in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 1830s after the death of her shipmaster father, the eleven-year-old Lucy Larcom went to work in a textile mill to help her family make ends meet. Originally published in 1889, her autobiography offers glimpses of the early years of the American factory system as well as of the social influences on her development. It remains an important and illuminating document of the Industrial Revolution and nineteenth-century cultural history.