High Wages by Dorothy Whipple

High Wages (1930) was Dorothy Whipple's second novel. It is about a girl called Jane who gets a badly-paid job in a draper’s shop in the early years of the last century. Yet the title of the book is based on a Carlyle quotation – ‘Experience doth take dreadfully high wages, but she teacheth like none other’ – and Jane, having saved some money and been lent some by a friend, opens her own dress-shop.

As Jane Brocket writes in her Persephone Preface: the novel ‘is a celebration of the Lancastrian values of hard work and stubbornness, and there could be no finer setting for a shop-girl-made-good story than the county in which cotton was king.’

REVIEWS

"A wonderful story. We see Jane develop and gain confidence and realise her dream.
But who is Jane going to share her life with, Wilfred loves her and so does Noel.
Then a change in circumstances changes everything. Love Dorothy Whipple." - Good Reads reviewer 

"I don't think anyone who has discovered Dorothy Whipple can understand why she is not better known and much more widely read. The books deal with normal people in normal families and yet are psychologically gripping." - Amazon reviewer

PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback with jacket
Publisher: Persephone Books
ISBN: 978190646 2604
Pages: 328