In 1907, aged seventy and nearing the end of her long life as a journalist and writer, Marianne Farningham published her autobiography. She gave it the forthright title A Working Woman’s Life, thus indicating that in her old age she constructed her identity as that of both ‘woman’ and ‘worker’, closely bound up with her gender as well as with the type of life she had lived. Looking back from the perspective of the early twentieth century, although with a view of life largely shaped in the 1840s and 1850s, she recounted, amongst other things, the joys of her work, the perils of overwork, and the pleasures of relaxation. Her writing accordingly included several passages addressing matters relating to the use and abuse of time.
