Harriet Hanson Robinson (1825–1911) was an American author, former Lowell mill worker, labor reformer, and woman suffrage advocate. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she moved with her widowed mother to Lowell as a child and began working in the city’s textile mills at about age ten. Her experiences among the “mill girls” shaped her later writing about industrial labor, education, and women’s independence. Robinson participated in the 1840s labor reform movement, including campaigns for a ten-hour workday. She later married William Stevens Robinson, an antislavery journalist and political reformer. After his death, she became increasingly active in the woman suffrage movement in Massachusetts. Her best-known book, Loom and Spindle; or, Life Among the Early Mill Girls, published in 1898, combines memoir, labor history, and social commentary. It remains an important account of the lives of young women employed in the early New England textile industry. She also wrote Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement, recounting the state’s long campaign for voting rights.
2 works on Textopian