A new woman on the waterways: Sara Jeanette Duncan (1861-1922)

Jodie takes the novel ‘Two Girls on a Barge’, published in 1891, and looks at it from the cultural context of late Victorian attitudes to women’s roles in society. Illustrated by copious drawings by F.H. Townsend, it tells of a voyage from Paddington to Coventry aboard a converted working narrow boat, the “Industrious”. Another, even earlier use of canals for leisure, but by people who had a completely different agenda to people who owned their own craft.