The shopgirl was the subject of popular novels, newspaper articles, and political treatises on womens work and leisure at the turn of the twentieth century. But who exactly was she, and why did she feature in so many narratives about women, sexuality, and urban life?

In Consuming Fantasies: Labor, Leisure, and the London Shopgirl, 1880-1920, Lise Shapiro Sanders examines the cultural significance of the shopgirl-both historical figure and fictional heroine-from the end of Queen Victorias reign through the First World War. As the author reveals, the shopgirl embodied the fantasies...