Back in England, she tried the first earning resource of the non-respectable woman: acting. Places where she performed included Farnham in Surrey and Chester (at a greater distance from London), and Warrington in Lancashire. She was taught by Charles Macklin , and acted under the name of Mrs Jackson. In 1785 she made a return trip to France, where suitors were plentiful though means of making a living were sparse.

By 1873, KG began receiving offers to illustrate popular books and magazines; she left school to pursue a career as an illustrator, while hoping to become a published author. Her pictures for greetings cards for the firm of Marcus Ward and Co. included sketches of local street urchins, which after appearing as cards were re-issued in gift books. In 1877 she had a picture hung at the Royal Academy . Her father introduced her to the colour printer Edmund Evans , which led to the publication of her first book, Under the Window, in 1879.

As a writer AMH published stories, children's literature, novels, and drama. She contributed regularly to periodicals and edited Sharpe's London Magazine and the St. James's Magazine. She used an extended morning (until 2 p.m.) for uninterrupted writing. Thursday was the social day of the week, when the afternoon and evening were given to dispensing hospitality at home, particularly to young writers.

First came a series of extended family visits where she was unofficially employed as nanny, housekeeper, house-decorator, and nurse. She cured bacon and made cheese. (She later, she said, gave her cheese recipe to several ladies going to Australia and New Zealand.) She also nursed a family of cousins through typhus, staying on her feet to attend the funeral of one who died. On one occasion she saved the life of a woman who had taken an overdose of laudanum.

EH was active, says Benger, as a patron of women writers—thereby giving the lie to those who say that women do not help out their own sex. More prosaically, for six months she later worked as tutor to the daughters of Lord Lucan .

Around 1838, Frances Watkins was sent out to work. As a live-in maid for a white family in Baltimore, she looked after the children and did other household chores. In later years she worked as a teacher, and was the first woman to teach at the Union Seminary , a school for free blacks near Columbus, Ohio. She found teaching to be very rewarding, noting that it is a work of time, a labor of patience, . . . and it should be a work of love.

FRH began teaching at Sunday School at the age of nine and continued to do so until 1860. She was a dedicated instructor and kept a detailed record of every student she taught. In February 1861 she began teaching the children of her sister Miriam , a task she continued for seven years.

She also worked as a teacher.

Despite her peripatetic wartime existence HD took over, by June 1916, Richard Aldington 's position as co-editor of The Egoist while he was serving in the British Army. (He had succeeded in this position to Rebecca West .) HD did this work for a year, even though her name never appeared.

After her degree course, SH went to work as a journalist and editor on the Coventry Evening Telegraph; she worked there for five years. Also during this time she had various part-time jobs, reviewed books, drifted, was serving [her] apprenticeship as a writer.

As a refuge from her unhapppy marriage, JOH began contributing society sketches to newspapers (her father writes that she had decided to adopt literature as a profession).

As a young adult Barbara Wreaks (later BH ) ran her own millinery shop.

Julia began by giving private lectures to friends at home, since her husband did not wish her to charge for appearing in public. On January 17, 1864, however, she drew a crowd for a public lecture delivered in a Boston church. Soon afterwards, she was asked to present a poem at a celebration for William Cullen Bryant . Of the three speakers, she was the only woman. The Chicago Tribune wrote that she has just the pathetic and well-measured voice for oracular manifestations. . . . She was received with much applause. After the success of her poetry reading, which at the time Julia called the greatest public honor of [her] life, she made plans to speak in Washington and Philadelphia.

Prevented by his near-blindness from becoming a scientist, AH worked as a teacher and a literary journalist while his writing career got under way.

She worked as a waitress in Ithaca, New York, during her time at Cornell. Back in Britain (perforce, since her US visa had expired) she got a job at a plant-breeding station at Aberystwyth, working for Professor George Stapledon on a scheme for improving soil fertility in the Welsh mountains and valleys. After that she got a job in London as a junior press officer for the Empire Marketing Board . She worked there until 1932.

As child, adolescent, and young woman (and chattel slave) Hatty worked as servant and nursemaid in two successive households in Edenton. The first was that of James Norcom , senior, whose household she joined as a chattel before she was twelve.

Anna Murphy (later ABJ ) was employed as a governess to the Marquess of Winchester's four sons.

The sixteen-year-old PDJ started work in the income tax office at Ely, where she was miserable; she resigned after eighteen months.

While she was a student at Queen's College, London , SJB became by invitation a maths tutor there. For this she received a salary, her acceptance of which was disparaged by her father, who wrote that it would be cruel to accept wages that belong to a class beneath you in social rank.SJB responded in an eloquent letter, questioning why the difference of [her] sex [should] alter the laws of right and honour? The salary gave her what she called a perfectly justifiable pride of earning, a sentiment that motivated her later to teach indigent women and children through various organizations. These included the Working Women's College , where SJB 's work introduced her to Octavia Hill .

Her training at St Thomas's included work in the country, and it was then that she met her future husband, as a patient.

Although her degree was in French and she had originally intended to be a painter, SK 's first jobs were as a teacher of English. She worked at a comprehensive school in Bristol for a year, then during 1960-2 at a secondary modern (non-academic) school in East London for two years.

During her school holidays JK worked in London, cleaning houses for an agency called Problem . As an undergraduate she worked for three summers as a porter (the only woman in the job) at the Westminster Hospital , and became fascinated with the strange backstage hospital life. She also house-sat for writer John Le Carré

After six years abroad, she returned to Ireland and struggled to gain employment. She was not wasting time, however. Although she applied for 300 jobs and got 300 rejection letters, during this time she read one good book every week. She became interested in Irish writing as well. Eventually, Keegan spent some time as a teacher in Dublin. She later said that it was a job she loved.