"And, oh! but the lilies are pure and fair": Fanny Forrester, Ben Brierley's Journal, and the Creation of a Working-Class Women's Pastoral Tradition

Fanny Forrester (1852–89) was a dye worker and poet who lived in Salford, near Manchester. As a house poet of the popular working-class periodical Ben Brierley's Journal between 1868 and 1882, Forrester addressed a wide regional audience, which enabled her to redefine the imaginative possibilities of the working-class pastoral poem. This essay illustrates how her newspaper poetry referenced the social tensions surrounding representations of working-class women. By writing urban pastorals, Forrester demonstrated how factory women could be integrated into a conservative, masculine poetic genre.