Saleslady, The.
[Labor]. Donovan, Frances R. The Saleslady. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, (1929).
8vo.; green cloth, printed label on spine; slightly worn; some discoloration; spine somewhat sunned; light wear to extremities.
First edition; printed as part of the University of Chicago Sociological Series. Considered in the series to be the sequel to Donovan’s earlier novel, The Woman Who Waits, a narrative about Donovan’s experience as a waitress in Chicago. With an introduction by Robert E. Park, who notes that “out of this record one gains a very real insight into the conditions under which a new type of woman is evolving, a woman sophisticated, self-reliant, competent—a woman of the world, in short, having her own philosophy and outlook on life and her own conception of values.”
Donovan explores the advantages of a career in the retail industry, as compared with the more popular career of choice for women in Donovan’s day, stenography. Donovan describes in a first-person narrative her own experience trying to get and hold a job as a shop girl in a department store in New York, with chapters dedicated to describing such phenomena as “shop talk” and the personalities of the girls she encountered, as well as the specialized training she underwent, and the often shocking behavior of the uppity clientele.
Includes 18 pages of “Songs of the Saleslady” lyrics. Donovan does not look up in any standard biographical references, but was clearly active in the study of women and labor.
(#5500)
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